


Too Many Bounty Hunters on Ord Mantell

by theZanyArthropleura



Series: A Thousand Closed, Shattered Hearts (A Thousand Open, Active Questlines) [3]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: Knights of the Old Republic (Video Games)
Genre: Aromantic Mission Vao, Bar Room Brawl, Humor, Multi, Nonbinary Revan, Planet Ord Mantell (Star Wars), RPG tropes, Team as Family, The character lists are only going to get weirder, an entire town's worth of NPCs, but for now it's just angst and pining, endgame barrissoka, endgame blyla
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-08
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-17 06:47:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 51,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28595697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theZanyArthropleura/pseuds/theZanyArthropleura
Summary: After escaping the prison complex on Cato Neimodia, andbelatedlylearning they’ve been thrown four thousand years into the future to a galaxy torn apart by a rising Empire, the Ebon Hawk crew follow an acquired lead to Ord Mantell, where they begin the very long and tedious process of helping random strangers with their problems in hopes of eventually stumbling into contact with the hidden spark of rebellion.
Relationships: Barriss Offee & Asajj Ventress, Barriss Offee & Mission Vao, HK-47 & IG-88 (Star Wars), Juhani/Revan (Star Wars), T3-M4 & CC-5052 | Bly
Series: A Thousand Closed, Shattered Hearts (A Thousand Open, Active Questlines) [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1914355
Comments: 16
Kudos: 29





	1. Hindsight is 19BBY

_**You don’t have to call me ‘Master,’ you know.** _

_**— Revan, 3956 BBY** _

Twenty-Seventh Brother sighed and stood to attention, the remains of his mechanical limbs still twitching and occasionally putting off the odd spark as he waited in the cleared-out section of the star destroyer’s hangar.

Beside him was Nineteenth Sister, whose marked veneer of apathy was as sharp as it was unconvincing, along with a total of twelve officers and around fifty stormtroopers – all that remained of both the Ylahv City occupation force and the Inquisitorius envoy put together.

At the far end of the hanger, the doors slid open, the light from beyond briefly casting the emerging figures in silhouette. Flanked by a pair of stormtroopers on either side, a sharply-dressed Imperial Moff strode forward, hands clasped boldly behind him and his grey hair slicked back above the unsettling, authoritative sneer across his young-yet-aging face.

“There will be no need for a full debriefing,” Tarkin began with faint, but detectable amusement, stopping just in front of Twenty-Seventh Brother with no intention whatsoever of hiding a condescendingly raised brow. “I’ve seen the last footage our probe droids were able to record, and believe me, it doesn’t look good for you.”

In his visually embarrassed, but by no means helpless state, Twenty-Seventh Brother restrained himself to an unfocused, ambiguous grimace that might have been about anything. Nineteenth Sister shivered so faintly it could only be felt in the Force.

“Regardless, I’m no stranger to the sorts of threats you faced either,” Tarkin changed course with a twisting smile, gaze passing over both Inquisitors and the gathered rank and file. “Consider yourselves read-in on a classified, ongoing matter, known only to the _highest_ of Imperial echelons.”

The brother’s eyes met Tarkin’s with noted surprise, and Tarkin answered with a too-pleased grin that made clear just how completely he had the two Force users under his thumb.

The Moff let the moment linger as he turned away from his audience and took several traveling steps past them, casting a gaze of feigned curiosity out into the vastness of space beyond the magnetic shield. “Those infiltrators you encountered, and their Jedi leader, that you briefly held in captivity? I want them found, and _dealt with_. I don’t care _how_ you do it, only that the true purpose of your mission remain known to only you and those assigned to aid you.”

He cast a knowing, over-shoulder look back toward Twenty-Seventh Brother, both encouraging and belittling.

“And you may, of course, handle our _other_ escaped prisoner however you see fit.”

Inside, the brother wanted to grin, or otherwise show his immense pleasure at receiving the order he’d always hoped against hope for, but however deeply he loathed Offee for his injuries, he found he still had enough unassigned spite left over to decide Tarkin didn’t deserve to be given the satisfaction.

“I must depart shortly for another matter,” Tarkin continued, turning around and reversing his pace without more than another passing glance at his audience, “but I’ll be leaving you with command of this ship and its crew, and I’ll be sending a trusted bounty hunter to accompany your efforts.”

The brother scowled in both irritation and actual disbelief. “A _bounty hunter?_ On a classified Imperial mission? You _can’t_ be serious.”

Tarkin stopped, emphasizing a brow raised in curiosity. “Yes, a bounty hunter. And one I suspect will be invaluable, for this task to proceed to my liking. You’re dismissed.”

Slowly, the gathering began to disperse, though the fact Tarkin hadn’t moved to leave added unneeded confusion and fearful hesitation to the process.

“Twenty-Seventh Brother,” the Moff pronounced evenly, the exact moment the Inquisitor took his first step toward the exit.

Pausing, said Inquisitor eyed Tarkin with a soft befuddlement, neither of the two making any moves until the rest of the hangar's immediate area had cleared of listeners.

“Reward my faith in you,” Tarkin began, with the hint of an agreeable smirk, “and there may be due rewards in order. It’s true, your position _does_ leave little room for advancement, but… something could be arranged.”

Tarkin wasn’t technically a superior, at least as far as Twenty-Seventh Brother had figured or cared, so the Inqisitor’s reply was a half-grimaced, half-grinned “I understand.” Watching as the Moff finally moved to depart, egotistical gears nonetheless started turning in the Inquisitor’s mind.

As far as Imperial-serving Force users went – which wasn’t very far at all – there weren’t too many positions above his current rank of Inquisitor. Perhaps he was to replace the Grand? Or… perhaps, should he be thinking even higher?

Maybe, just maybe, Tarkin could be useful after all.

  


* * *

  


He was still in the med-bay, carefully running through the many configurations of his repaired arms, when the doors opened and the bounty hunter stepped through.

Or, someone Twenty-Seventh Brother could rightly assume was the bounty hunter, given there’d be little other reason to ever see an _Ithorian_ on an imperial star destroyer.

The grey-skinned alien’s forward-protruding, slug-like throat and upcurving head bobbed gently along with his long, lanky, swaying arms as he strode inside, standing before the recovering Inquisitor’s inclined medical chair. He was wearing a simple, sleeveless combat vest in a bright orange, currently sporting far fewer holsters and utility belts than would be expected of one in the bounty hunting profession. His only weapon appeared to be, curiously, a standard-issue Imperial blaster he held inattentively in his right hand.

“So, what’s a _bounty hunter_ got to bring to the table that we can’t?” Twenty-Seventh Brother answered with a sneer, further examining the complex joints in his wrist as if to pretend he hadn’t looked up at the intruder at all.

_You might be surprised_ , was the concise answer, spoken in deep, echoing, garbled breaths through the two long, slit-like mouths on either side of the alien’s neck.

Hearing, and realizing he still understood the Ithorian language grated on the Inquisitor’s ears, too reminiscent of late-night conversations in the archives with… what was it? _Corobb_ something-or-other, that he had no reason to still remember. “Well if Tarkin says you’re up to the task, I’ll give you a _shot_ , but just know, I’m not expecting you to last three seconds against a Jedi.”

_Jedi can be broken._

Twenty-Seventh Brother _did_ look up then, fully settling confused, searching eyes toward the quiet, stoically observing alien who despite the ominous, unexpected statement, now offered no answers.

“…Who are you?” the brother asked slowly, his skeptical eyes cast intently on the wide-set, large but lid-concealed pair that stared back with unsettling, dark focus.

_My name is Aktra Lartu… but you might call me Siren._

  


* * *

  


Mission woke to lips brushing softly against hers, a low moan drifting out from behind them.

Then, a hand was absently caressing down her lek, and _Ohhhhh_ that was nice. Barriss’ faint, unconscious murmurings grew louder, slowly resolving into audible syllables.

“…’soka…”

Mission grinned wildly into the kiss.

_I knew it._

Letting that thought settle into place, Mission then remembered, that no matter how very, _very_ nice it all felt, she should probably wake Barriss up before she embarrassed herself any more than she already had… if that was even possible. Carefully, she slipped a hand between the two of them, setting her palm flat against Barriss’ upper shoulder, and slowly pushed the other girl away, even while a surprisingly flexible neck strained to keep up the contact.

Deep blue eyes blinked awake, looking quite impressively mortified. Barriss jumped her prone form as far back as the small bunk would allow, with a stricken look of panic and horror that was now vastly more concerning than amusing.

“Hey, hey, it’s _fine_ ,” Mission reassured worriedly, attempting to reach out a grounding hand but giving up on it when Barriss flinched and nearly rolled all the way off the bunk.

“That wasn’t…” Barriss finally found her voice, sort of. “I didn’t mean…”

“I know,” Mission cut in. “That wasn’t for me, you were dreaming about Ahsoka.”

Barriss stopped suddenly in her panic, if only to shoot Mission a stunned, bewildered scowl of offense. “Wh- _what?_ N-no, I… _No_.”

Mission smiled in victory. “Why’d you _say her name_ , then?”

“I…”

There was just… this frozen blankness, a thousand-meter stare, and a shaken, horrified grimace to the point it was no small worry that Barriss might be skipping right past the apparent revelation itself and onto the new implications it carried for her past actions.

“Hey,” Mission reached over while Barriss was distracted, quietly hooking a few fingers over a tense but unattended hand, whose back was tattooed with four small black diamonds arranged in the shape of a larger diamond. “Process this at your own pace, okay?”

After another, shorter moment of internal debate, Barriss finally exhaled, her shocked and unsettled eyes still not leaving Mission’s even as she let most of the immediate tension ease. “I am so, so sorry, I don’t… I don’t know how that could’ve happened…”

“You’ve been in prison a long time,” Mission grinned with mild amusement. “No judgement here.”

Barriss still made an unsuccessful attempt to draw her hand away from Mission’s. “It was _entirely inappropriate_ , conscious or not. I accept _full_ responsibility for whatever damages I may have—”

The Twi’lek shrugged casually through the furious self-scolding. “I mean… it’s not like I _minded_.”

Barriss seemed to gain new focus, brows drawing together in worried surprise, as if she’d finally, _just_ processed that Mission wasn’t in any way upset with her.

“… _Oh_ ,” her parting lips spoke with new recognition, her diamond-specked cheeks warming adorably to a deeper olive tone.

Mission let go, if only to hold up her hand palm-first toward Barriss. “Not that I’m _asking_ or anything, just… don’t feel _too_ bad about it, you know? If anything, _I_ should be sorry about like… the half a second I hesitated before waking you up.” She shuddered just a little guiltily, setting her hand back down but keeping it closed and toward herself. “If you… _do_ want me to leave now, I’ll…”

“No, it’s…” Barriss reached over this time, taking Mission’s hand again. She looked worried, then fell to eye-averting guilt, then composed herself again to a bleak hope. “As much as I’m tempted toward any excuse to reject your undeserved hospitality, even such a cruel one, I’m actually… _not_ uncomfortable, just with the mere idea that you might have… those sorts of feelings for—”

“ _WHOA_ , whoa, whoa!” a semi-panicked Mission broke away from the assuring touch and rolled back enough to raise both hands in front of her. “I said I liked kissing you, _not_ that I had feelings for you.”

She paused, then, suddenly just as startled and confused for herself as Barriss now looked.

“There’s… there’s a difference, okay?” She continued shakily “ _Loving_ someone is just… it’s a lot of responsibility, you know? I’m not… _No way_ am I ready to be that for anybody. It’s not… It’s not that I _wouldn’t_ , just… you know, it’s… it’s…”

By now, Barriss was just staring at her worriedly, seeming fully content to let the matter drop as soon as Mission was ready to stop needlessly prolonging it. Which Mission _did_ , then, because she was _not_ about to get into all of that right now. Any more than she already had. For some reason.

Mission relaxed with a sigh, and, still feeling awkward, slowly pushed herself up, sliding her legs around and down to the floor. Sitting mostly sideways along the edge of the bunk, Mission looked back down at Barriss, a shaky frown forming as the Mirialan remained prone and occupied with her own thoughts.

“I can’t believe I did that to her,” Barriss whispered quietly after a time, stricken by tears. “How could I have… if I…”

“It makes perfect sense to me,” Mission countered with a sad understanding. “The _attachment_ thing, right? Do they still have that?”

Barriss looked up with focus, and a moment of solemn reflection. “Yes, they…”

“Then it’s like you said,” Mission continued darkly. “The Jedi were still in your head, even when you were plotting against them. The more you were drawn to Ahsoka, the more you felt like it was wrong, and you should follow the code and push her away. The more you felt _right_ in creating distance, rejecting those emotions… maybe you even talked yourself into resenting her, or your friendship, for making you feel like you were slipping, I don’t know. Point is… it would’ve been _easier_ to do what you did to her, not harder.” She eyed Barriss with a questioning, piercing glare. “Is any of that right?”

Barriss looked uncomfortable, hesitant, then contemplative for a long moment. “I… don’t know.”

Mission retreated with a sigh, softening with an experimental, light, warm touch along Barriss’ arm and shoulder. “It’s alright, don’t… don’t let me put words in your head, okay? I just don’t want you beating yourself up over something you didn’t even realize. Figuring stuff like that out, it’s… it’s not always the best timing. The whole galaxy doesn’t exactly make it easy, to start with, and then the Jedi take it even further than that.”

Barriss took a long breath, then quieted, still sorting through saddening thoughts but at least looking less troubled than before. Mission watched her rest, and leant back down on an elbow, showing the beginning of a smile when her prying eyes finally caught those of the evasive Mirialan.

“ _So_ ,” Mission grinned deviously, tracing a slow, casual yet damning path down the side of her own headtail. “Ahsoka’s a Twi’lek, huh?”

Barriss, seeming at once to infer the significance, blushed heavily and made a valiant attempt to hide her face. “… _Togruta_ , actually.”

  


* * *

  


[Bly] has joined [Guess who’s got four thumbs and just bought it?]

[Bly]: oh, kark it

[Bly]: kriff it all to hel

[Bly]: who are you and why are you in this chat?

[T3-M4]: identity of entity [self] is T3-series astromech/utility droid

[Bly]: so a droid found our old channel, huh?

[Bly]: how’d you get in here?

[T3-M4]: channel has been accessed through datapad purchased by subcategory [Crew]

[Bly]: must be from one of the other CCs

[Bly]: any chance you know whose it is?

[T3-M4]: that information has not been recovered

[Bly]: probably one of the dead ones anyway

[Bly]: or someone ditched it after the order

[Bly]: not like it matters

[Bly]: hate to break it to you, but you bought a piece of junk

[Bly]: won’t find anyone using this chat ever again

[T3-M4]: statement of [Bly] is incorrect. Channel is in use by entity [Bly]

[Bly]: that’s only cause I don’t give a nerf’s kark _who_ sees what I’m up to

[Bly]: empire could execute me tomorrow and I’d thank them

[Bly]: hear that? come and get me, _hut’uun!_

[T3-M4]: entity [self] has encrypted this channel against outside monitoring

[Bly]: eh, they’d just make me tell ‘em if they figured something was up

[Bly]: not like I care one bit

[T3-M4]: Alert: entity [Bly] has displayed concerning level of disregard for life of entity [Bly]

[Bly]: well aren’t you one smart droid

[Bly]: got anyone you care about?

[Bly]: anyone ever order you to shoot them in the back and watch them die?

[T3-M4]: entity [Revan] has installed specific safeguards to prevent that exact circumstance

[T3-M4]: although the direction of attack is not a strictly adhered-to variable

[T3-M4]: nor is continued observation afterward

[Bly]: then keep livin’ the dream, buddy!

[Bly]: keep livin’ the dream

[Bly] has left [Guess who’s got four thumbs and just bought it?]

  


* * *

  


The _Ebon Hawk_ approached a sphere in shades of brown and amber, interwoven with creeping patches of deep blue. The cloud layer was thick, dusting the view with a wispy layer of pale grey, but formed a brilliant sickle of shining amethyst around the long curve of the horizon.

“So… the _planet_ of Ord Mantell,” Mission pondered aloud. “Which city do you think the Rebels are hiding closest to?”

Revan leaned forward, concentrating in thought, then pointed out through the window as the world’s finer surface features resolved. “I’m having a good feeling about… _that one over there_.”

Mission nodded, and adjusted the controls, taking them down.

From beneath, the pale, periwinkle tint of the cloud layer now colored the whole of the grey sky above, and even in the fading daylight seemed to cast the entire surface in that strange state of uncanny brightness where shadows were less prominent.

What had looked like a river from the upper atmosphere was in fact… well, probably still technically a river, but a bit wider, almost like an inland sea. On the northern bank rested the settlement in question, set atop a cliff face overlooking the water and nestled between the edge and a large, obsidian-black mountain range farther to the north and northwest. Prefabricated rectangular buildings fit like puzzle pieces around the durasteel plate roadways, while differing cylindrical structures made outer courtyards of the sand-ground paths around them. Amber grass painted swaths over the dry plains to the east, the tree-dotted foothills at the northern edges of the town center, and anywhere sufficiently level on the broad, rocky range farther north and the smaller, freestanding mountain in the northeast.

There was no central spaceport location. Instead, various landing pads dotted the space around the settlement, some scattered in the steep, rocky cliffs rising to the west and others laid out in rows along the flatter, plateau-pocked plains to the east. A wide and shallow tributary ran southward between the larger mountain range and its isolated neighbor, passing under an east-west bridge between the cliffside buildings and the plains landing pads until it finally waterfalled down the steep drop into the larger body of water below.

Mission set the hawk down on one of the pads on the western side, lowering the freighter into a crown of rocky spires that surrounded the recessed platform of square metal. A long, wide stairwell zig-zagged down the mountain at alternating right angles, but in the gold-magenta light of late evening, it was wordlessly decided to leave the exploring to the following day.

 _Best to get an early start_ , Mission thought, smirking to herself as a plan began piecing itself together.


	2. Karma Chameleons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So I may or may not have hit the 'post chapter' button completely by accident, but you know what? No takebacks here you go it's early now.

On the morning of the third day, Barriss was awake earlier than she would have liked.

She’d had several nightmares, she remembered, but nothing especially unusual. The lights in the crew quarters were still on low brightness, and though she was struck by the cold and creeping fear of the quiet, solitary space, she found those sensations dissipating rather quickly.

Waking up without sore muscles was still something she was getting used to. She’d recognized almost immediately, that under _no_ circumstances would Mission have allowed her to deny herself a bed as she had in the cell, so she’d taken the hit of unavoidable guilt but indulged in the comfort and ease the accommodations brough her.

She wasn’t sure exactly what had drawn her out of sleep, but now she could feel the faintest, attention-seeking _tap-tap-tap_ at the back of her mind, almost like someone trying to reach out to her in the Force.

Well, she knew exactly who she _thought_ it was, but pointedly ignored the possibility. Even since being freed from the suppression restraints, she hadn’t dared reach out to Ahsoka of her own accord, let alone anyone. Part of her wondered if she actually had that, or _any_ bonds left to tap, but mostly she had no inclination to hold on to futile hope.

More than likely, Ahsoka had perished with the rest of the Jedi, and it was as simple as that.

And Barriss was alive… somehow. Her betrayal had spared her, yet condemned her, to a galaxy filled with even more suffering and death than the one she hadn’t been able to bear. To live, and bear witness to the rise of every darkness she had once accused the Republic of courting.

_How could I have done this to you? How could I have cast your life aside so carelessly?_

_…as I did mine._

Resignedly, she lay present and unmoving, tasting the cool air on her tongue with each deep and grounding breath. Still, for every moment of peace, her thoughts inevitably dragged her back down to despair like the troughs of flowing waves on the open sea. It was almost comforting to be able to wallow, knowing she had the early hours of the morning free from interruption or distracting fears. These were thoughts Barriss _should_ be left alone with, _should_ be unrelentingly haunted by, for every waking hour she had left to live.

Though it wasn’t long before something else was prodding at the edges of her thoughts.

Something about the air around her… the _Force_ around her… it didn’t feel right. She couldn’t exactly categorize it as a warning of danger, just a lingering sense that not everything was as it appeared.

Her eyes were still drowsy, tear-clogged, and again adjusting to even the low levels of light as she rolled over and attempted to determine the cause. She could see nothing but the patterns on the opposite wall of the room, shaped as a semi-inverse imprint of the lights behind her, filtered through the wavy distortions of tired, adjusting eyes.

Except the distortions didn’t fade, even as the rest of her vision cleared.

The air before her flickered with electrically-outlined silhouettes as a pair of stealth field generators deactivated, revealing Mission and Juhani standing over her, both of their faces struck with broad grins of extraordinary mischief.

“Sorry, sleepyhead, but we picked you for the third slot in our party,” Mission apologized with no guilt whatsoever, “ _so_ … who’s ready for some adventuring!”

Barriss rolled back over with a groan. _Five more minutes_ , she pleaded internally. _Just five more minutes of uninterrupted, well-deserved depressive spiraling before I have to deal with whatever complete nonsense they’ve cooked up this time_.

Mission sighed, and from the sounds of her footsteps, approached the edge of the bunk, kneeling down enough to lay her upper body sideways along the bed’s edge and drape an arm around Barriss in her blanket bundle. “I know you’re tired, and it’s comfy, but we really do have some stuff planned for today that you’ll probably want in on.”

For the moment, Barriss would admit she was tempted. She still wasn’t sure how she felt about physical contact in general, but thus far, Mission’s efforts at closeness had, somewhat darkly, served her needs on two fronts: there was nothing quite like finally knowing she wasn’t alone, then reminding herself it was too late for it to matter.

But there were other matters to consider.

“I assure you, I have no interest in undertaking the effort of proving my case to the rebellion, only to become party to death and destruction yet again.”

There was a confused, worried shift through Mission’s muscles. “Who said anything about joining the rebellion?”

Barriss scowled skeptically. “What do you mean? Isn’t that what we’re here to do?”

“I mean, sure, _eventually_ ,” Mission corrected, withdrawing to stand. “First we have to go through the part where we scout out the area, talk to random strangers, and do tons of favors for them until either we gain enough street cred to be noticed by the right people, or it all inevitably leads us to someone who can point us in the right direction.”

Finally rolling back over, Barriss stared, for almost a full minute, with a statically raised brow. “And that _works?_ ”

Mission nodded, an index finger still in the air, as if she’d been using it to accentuate the explanation of her process. “You would be both surprised and terrified by how much we learned about the locations of the Star Maps just by asking random store owners in spaceports.”

“We’ve accumulated a few tasks that should all be centered around the northeast of the settlement,” Juhani added, scrolling through her datapad. “So far, we have a misplaced aural amplification aid to locate, a youth who failed to report for a club meeting, and then… whatever else will be set before us, as we travel this path.”

“So, these could really take us just about anywhere,” Mission admitted, “and we _might_ end up in a fight or two, but if it comes to that, Juhani and I can handle it with just the two of us. Most of the day will probably be travel time in the city and countryside, making contacts and the like.”

For a long time, Barriss stared at both of them, already fully geared-up in their respective suits of fiber armor and energized by a bright and hopeful eagerness that, as of yet, remained a perplexing mystery. It was clear they weren’t going to take ‘no’ for an answer, and Barriss supposed the proposition was as good a way as any to make herself useful.

If there was anything more at work, in her resigned decision to accompany the pair, she cast the shaky thoughts aside before she could dwell on them, and moved to rise.

  


* * *

  


Descending the winding stairs from the landing pad, the three travelers set out along the wide platform overlooking the water below, mingling through the lane for foot traffic while the occasional hovering vehicle rounded closer to the buildings farther to the left.

Some civilians mingled by the outer railing, looking out into the tree-dotted plain on the water’s opposite shore or up into the magenta-tinted, cloudy sky. Others had their own business in the settlement proper, hurrying about on the building modules’ sidewalk portions or crossing at intersections.

Having taken the lead, Mission had her eyes on the map projected on her datapad, occasionally glancing to the left as she attempted to find the best spot to turn in through the buildings.

No one looked at them, at least not with any apparent recognition. The worry had struck Barriss as soon as the party had entered the more populated areas of town, but it had apparently been unfounded, and by the lack of concern shown by Mission and Juhani, it didn’t seem to have been an issue even in their time.

As the end of the overlook neared, and the wide, shallow river running southward to the cliff’s edge became visible beyond, Juhani stopped to linger in place, drawing the other two to a halt as well. Glancing up again, Mission appeared to understand with a small smile, standing close at Juhani’s right and beckoning Barriss to do the same at her left.

“There are… so many Cathar here…”

Barriss noted the strong emotion in the whispered, awestruck words, but with a glance around, she could pick out only three, potentially four Cathar among nearly a hundred visible faces of varying species in the immediate vicinity.

But no… Juhani hailed from shortly after the Mandalorian wars, in which her species’ homeworld had been devastated, the population slaughtered and enslaved. To see multiple Cathar among an intermingling populace was likely an extremely rare sight.

“It’s not so uncommon, in the present,” Barriss began, addressing Juhani directly for what she realized was the first time and growing even more nervous when the Cathar turned to peer down at the Mirialan with curiosity. “Although I… suppose I have no reference for how they have fared under the Empire, but the Cathar _did_ manage to reestablish their home planet to something of its former prominence, even if it took until relatively recently in galactic history for them to do so.”

Juhani sighed with relief, kind eyes silently thanking Barriss as her face fell solemnly. “In four thousand years… I had thought they might have become extinct entirely.”

Barriss felt the spark of warmth and connection in the Force, and instinctively recoiled from the forming bond. Juhani seemed surprised, and confused, but more apologetic than offended.

Juhani… still didn’t _know_ , and Barriss was left to wonder what to make of that.

  


* * *

  


At the northeast end of the settlement, the last few buildings gave way to a moderately wide tract of rolling plain, nestled between the flat, vertical rock faces of the larger mountain range to the north and the smaller one farther to the east. Through it wound the same shallow river that ran north-south between the populated part of the settlement and the eastern landing pads. Large, auburn-skinned grazing creatures with numerous curved horns and cobblestone-like dorsal armor wandered between the sparsely-scattered trees and rocky mounds that littered the space, but the signs of sentient life seemed to end at the small, metallic bridge that jutted out from the finished ground path to provide crossing over one leg of the river.

“Okay, so…” Mission’s eyes scanned the notes on her datapad, then the view in front of her. “We’re looking for a Human named Delcan, and he should look like…” With a smile, her searching gaze fixed in place. “Like that guy standing over there on the bridge!”

The three of them hurried up the shallow over-curve of the bridge, making their way toward the apex where a distressed, dejected-looking Human rested with his arms over the north-facing side rail. He had medium-to-dark tan skin, with short black hair, and his jacket was white and light grey but stained amber in places, in a color similar to that of the planet’s grass.

“You’re Delcan, right?” Mission began as the group slowed to a stop.

The Human looked up, seeming taken off-guard but only mildly shocked, and nodded slowly. “I am. Who’s asking?”

“Some kids near the recruitment center said you didn’t make it to their meeting,” Mission explained. “I think they were worried.”

“Huh,” Delcan said with a shrug. “Wasn’t sure they would be.”

Misson’s brows furrowed. “What do you mean.”

Delcan sighed, head resting back on his hands as he searched the wilderness once more. “I guess if they talked to _you_ about it, they must be pretty worried after all,” he contemplated, his sour mood faltering until he finally looked back at Mission with a plea in his eyes. “Look, I… if you’re really here to help, I could use some about now. Well… not _me_ , actually, but that’s kinda the whole point…”

“Tell us what’s going on,” Juhani persuaded softly with a nod, and Delcan’s last hesitance vanished.

“So there’s these guys who hang out around town,” he began, voice seeming slightly shaken. “Me and some of my buddies were rolling with ‘em for a while, just… tryna’ prove we got it, you know? Anyway, a year or so back these guys start buying into that Empire stuff, and well… _of course_ we didn’t mean anything by it, it was just… just what you did to be cool. To get noticed.”

Mission nodded in acknowledgement, with a concernedly bleak smile. “Go on…”

“So we…” Delcan tensed a bit. “We didn’t think there was any harm in it! We just… did what they did, liked what they liked, said what they said… It wasn’t even really a lot at first, just nodding along when _they_ said stuff, but… my friend Azala… did they even _say_ anything about her?”

Mission met the Human’s questioning gaze with a frown. “First I’m hearing the name.”

“ _Figures_ , I… I guess.” Delcan’s conflict was apparent. “We were just all hanging out yesterday by the center, and then she just… ran off crying and… and the other guys all started laughing and said I should just let her go, but… but I couldn’t! I mean yeah, she’s Devaronian, but… she’s my _friend_ , I couldn’t leave her!”

Barriss noticed the way Mission leant close about a meter down the railing, still with a look of concern but attempting to assure with focused attention. “What was happening when she left?”

“It was just… the usual stuff!” Delcan pleaded incredulously, then quieted on reflection. “I mean, it’s not like she hasn’t brought it up with me before, it’s just… she can never seem to explain it to me without getting into a full-blown panic! I mean sure, the Empire doesn’t like aliens, I know, I _know_ , but… taking away rights? Covering up murders? Rounding people up to sell as slaves? Every time she goes off like that, I just try to think logically and… it can’t be _that_ bad, can it?”

Mission’s brow furrowed sadly. “And what do you think now?”

“She’s…” Delcan shook his head. “She… has to be overreacting, right? I mean the stuff she says…”

Juhani settled against the rail on the other side. “And… what if she is not?”

Delcan hung his head low. “Then… then that’s messed up, but… the Empire would never do that. _People_ would never do that! I mean… look around, it’s not the end of the world!”

 _Because your own life in particular hasn’t been interrupted?_ Barriss thought with a mild sneer, one she wasn’t sure she truly cared to conceal visibly. _Because evil is being implemented in a calm and orderly fashion? Because one settlement on a planet in the Mid Rim hasn’t yet descended into complete and utter chaos?_ There were, in fact, quite a few choice replies to the statement, any one of which—

“Are you saying you don’t trust her?” Mission asked instead. “That she trusted you, confided in you, and you’re still not sure whether to believe her?”

Delcan winced, and hung his head again in shame. “I… Maybe I should have.” He shook his head, and turned back around. “Just… I made it as far as the third river bend looking for her, but something’s got the grazers riled up, and I barely got away from them. Azala’s out there, though, I know it! I… I guess if she doesn’t want to see me, that’s fine, but please just make sure she’s okay!”

From there, Delcan seemed intent only to urge the trio on, so they made a rapid departure. Past the end of the bridge, the path continued for about forty meters as nothing more than a cut of bare sand through the amber grass, before tapering off entirely. It was another hundred or so meters out, past several bends of the river and numerous idle and passive grazers, before the party began to close in on the presumed target location.

In the middle of a wider section of the river – though still apparently shallow enough to wade across – a large, triangular rock formation rose out of the water’s center, equidistant between the shores. The four-legged Gapillian grazers, both in the water and the surrounding grass, walked with tensed gaits and intermittently shook their heads roughly, those nearest to the small island emitting occasional low grunts as they threateningly aimed their densely-horned heads up the angle of the sheer rock slopes in front of them.

At the rock’s very peak, a single humanoid figure rested in a pseudo-kneel, her nose and mouth hidden behind the hands clasped over her one vertically arched knee. The pair of large, black circles adorning her forehead marked her as Devaronian, her skin a rosy orange a few shades paler than Ahsoka’s and her dark hair tied into a long braid hanging down her back. Even from a distance, it was clear she was visibly shuddering and fearful, eyes leveled low toward the grazers but shooting immediately upward in alarm at the new arrivals.

“Azala!” Mission called out with a wave, from atop a cresting, grassy cliff that rose above the sandy river-shore and kept the party away from the apparent aggression-range of the grazers below.

“Hey!” Azala called out with a wave of her own. “Who are you? What are you doing here? Can you get me down?”

“I’m Mission, we’re here to save you, and… probably!”

“Watch out, the grazers will get you!” Azala shouted back.

“We can get through ‘em just fine with our stealth fields,” Mission replied, “but that doesn’t help us bring you back! Any idea what’s got them so angry?”

“I… I think it might be that antenna over there!” Azala indicated, pointing a few dozen meters to the west toward where a small, standing-height, metal tower was mounted in the amber grass and anchored with a tripod of tie-down lines. “I tried throwing rocks at it, but I ran out a few hours ago. I think it’s broadcasting some kind of signal.”

“Okay, just give us a minute!”

Mission and Juhani activated their stealth field generators, and with a focused gaze, Barriss followed the visible distortions in the air as the two carefully navigated the moving grazers and made their way to the small antenna. The panel mounted on the device’s side turned on as Mission hacked into it, and as soon as the display went black again, the grazers all seemed to shake their heads out of trances and began to haphazardly wander off.

Still navigating a wide berth around the beasts out of caution, Barriss tracked the footprints in the sand and met a decloaking Mission and Juhani at the nearer bank of the river. Azala leapt down the side of the rock and splashed over through the shallow water to meet them.

“Thank you! I… How did you even find me?” As she slowed to a stop on the riverbank, the Devaronian’s brow furrowed slightly – not with open contempt, but something more to the tune of minor disappointment or annoyance. “Delcan sent you, didn’t he?”

“Well, he _did_ tell us you were out here,” Mission began delicately, “but we’re not working for him or anything. We’re here because we want to help.”

Azala breathed faint relief, but shook her head and winced. “I just… _aughhh_. It’s like he’s not even hearing me sometimes! How can he just go on like nothing’s wrong?”

“You don’t have to talk to him again, he said that himself.”

“Oh, so he’d rather just go back to his perfect, carefree life and forget all about me!”

Mission balked, looking worried, but pushing on. “I don’t think anyone’s life is ever really perfect, and… and I think he just wanted to give you some space, or the option at least.”

“Like _I’m_ the one who needs space?”

After several seconds, Azala looked apologetic for lashing out, taking several deep breaths but only calming a little.

“I’m just… not sure we can even be friends anymore. I _tried_ to keep everything to myself, and just focus on what we had, but it just… it keeps feeling like…”

“Like things have changed so much, and so differently for both of you, that one who was once a trusted friend is no longer someone you feel you can confide in.”

Barriss couldn’t be sure what had possessed her to speak, but now Azala’s eyes were set squarely on her, as were Mission’s and Juhani’s. She took a light, steadying breath and cautiously continued.

“As if… any true closeness has become an illusion, and has lost its worth entirely, when you’ve become so afraid to be honest about the true darkness and hurt that looms over you. Perhaps, then, resentment isn’t so far off the mark. It’s easy to believe someone will never care about you enough to hear your pain in the face of a life that’s served them so differently, that hasn’t broken them as it has you. Easy to fall into that pit of despair and reject the bond entirely, keeping up only a façade and refusing to believe any concern shown to you is genuine at all.”

She breathed again and shook her head, meeting Azala’s eyes from where her own gaze had lowered with every confession.

“For all he says, your friend does care for you, and has at least _believed_ he’s been showing you that. If he won’t listen to facts and figures, faraway death and corruption, he might at least listen to how much it’s hurting you.” Barriss lowered her head again, the next words nearly whispered and spoken only for herself. “I had… started to wonder whether something like that might have worked, if I’d only tried…”

Then, Mission’s hand was on her shoulder, meeting her eyes only to warmly lift the burden of continuing. “You can talk to him, or not,” the Twi’lek spoke in Azala’s direction, “but… I think maybe it would be okay to give it a shot, if you’re up to it.”

The Devaronian looked curious for a moment, then nodded, a grateful smile breaking her lips as she took one more look at the group as a whole. “Just… thank you. I run out here to vent sometimes, I didn’t even notice what was up with the grazers until they already had me cornered. I don’t know how long I could’ve lasted out here.”

“Just be careful, and stay safe,” Mission replied, and there was an overwhelming warmth in her eyes that seemed almost ready to spill over. Reluctantly pulling away, her gaze fell to curiosity as it drifted to the rock formation. “Any chance you found… some kind of aural hearing aid up there? Someone else we’re helping said she lost it in the rocks out here.”

Azala shrugged with apology. “I must have picked the whole thing apart looking for anything to throw at that antenna, and I didn’t see anything like that… there’s a bunch of other rock formations around here, though, it could have been a different one.”

“Okay, just checking,” Mission assured. She tensed uncertainly as the moment dragged on, but ultimately remained still and gave a friendly wave as Azala departed for the settlement.

As they turned back to the wilderness that now surrounded them, Barriss took a moment to look at the grazers – their quadruped stance, their stubby tails, their mountainous, rocky backs, and the many forward-pointed horns clustered like gnarled tree roots. There was something deeply strange and majestic about them, now wandering the plains with gentle, easy strides and drinking slowly at the river’s edge.

  


* * *

  


“I do not think what we’re looking for will be found on this side of the ravine,” Juhani announced with an exhausted breath, after around a half hour of searching the rocks along the north-westward side of the wide mountain pass.

Mission had moved away from the jagged boulders, and now stood facing a sheer rock wall, looking contemplatively upward to a ledge around six meters off the ground.

“Okay, _hear me out_ , here…” the Twi’lek began with a broad smile and slight nerves. “So, what we do is… we run all the way back the _Ebon Hawk_ , then run all the way back here, and use the built-up momentum to—” She bounced on her knees and made an upward-pointing, cresting wave gesture with her right hand. “— _leap_ the extra few meters to get us up to that ledge and we can keep searching there.”

Barriss just _stared_ at her for a few long moments, while Mission’s smile continued to insist everything she’d said was perfectly self-explanatory.

“I think, perhaps, we should start looking over here,” Juhani called out again, from across the narrow plain. She’d already begun a preemptive search of several more rocky areas near the opposite, south-eastward cliff face.

Mission’s shoulders slumped. “ _Fine_ , but if we don’t find it over there, we’re doing my thing. It worked on Dantooine, it’ll work here.”

Barriss crossed the plains, waded a shallow, island-chained stretch of the river, and took to scouring the area around some large, climbable boulders. She still hadn’t seen a sign of anything manufactured – save for the antenna, whose purpose was still a mystery – but she realized that beyond that, she had little idea what she was actually looking for.

“Is this… a general-purpose hearing device, or one fitted to a specific species?” she asked aloud, not sure she’d be heard considering the distance now between the three members of the party. “Can you tell me anything else about who it’s for?”

Mission appeared suddenly from over a distant ledge in the rock, searching for Barriss until their eyes met. “She’s a Twi’lek, too. Didn’t say what the hearing aid looked like, but…”

Just then, Barriss’ eyes caught a glint as her gaze passed over a narrow ditch in the dark-colored obsidian. She reached down, and withdrew a thin, C-shaped metal band, the two ends fixed with a pair of wide, parallel rings that certainly appeared as if they’d fit around the bases of a female Twi’lek’s conical hearing organs.

“You found it!” Mission cheered from where she still stood, fist-pumping the air.

  


* * *

  


Delcan was still on the bridge, but now Azala had joined him, and though the two seemed to be in the midst of a weighted conversation, they both turned to acknowledge the familiar travelers making their return trip across.

“Hey… did you find that thing you were looking for?” Azala asked, a tentatively hopeful look in her otherwise tired eyes.

“Sure did!” Mission boasted, pointing to Barriss.

Barriss held up the thin amplifier still balanced in her hooked fingers, shrugging off the faint attempt at praise.

“Hey, uh…” Delcan began, seeming to sigh heavily along with the words. “Thanks for… for everything. I still don’t really know what I’m supposed to do, or how I can wrap my head around everything and stop it from feeling so wrong, but… it’s important, and I… I know I need to try. For her, and to… to get myself out of just thinking what seems most convenient.”

Juhani smiled worriedly in sympathy, and it was her that stepped forward, her catlike eyes lingering patiently until Delcan’s had fully risen to meet them.

“This is a time of great fear, and great suffering,” she began, “as it has always been, for those without the luxury of never having to see it. Sometimes, to truly be a comfort to another means you must open your eyes to the thing you could not bring yourself to see before, and open your mind to believe it.”

The Cathar smiled warmly, then, placing a steady hand on the Human’s shoulder and provoking something like surprise or momentary awe.

“But I can sense your heart is not a cruel one. Do not allow it to be corrupted to such, because you cannot process the ways others hurt, or how they express their pain.”

Unexpectedly, she turned to Azala as well, a nod of acknowledgement drawing the Devaronian’s eyes with the same awe and wonder.

“And you… you must learn to quell the fire of your rage, even though it is justified. Learn to find peace in your mind, even amid the cruelty and pain that exists around you, and know it is _not_ acceptance, _not_ turning away, but allowing yourself the pause to heal from the hurt it brings you. Never cast your anger upon those who truly wish to help, and do not dismiss the hurt another feels, merely because it pales in comparison to your own. In how the mind is troubled, the divide is rarely so great, and such may be a moment for compassion, when all hope is not yet lost.”

Barriss had pieced together quickly that none of the Force users on the _Ebon Hawk_ ’s crew had any remaining inclination to associate themselves with the Jedi, but seeing the events before her now, it was immediately clear to her how completely Juhani, at the very least, embodied everything the Order had once claimed to stand for.

Or… as they had truly _been_ , for some, in those moments when the necessity of battle was distant enough not to tear them away from their true purpose. Maybe part of Barriss had forgotten what the Jedi had been before the war, dismissed her once-dreams as mere theoretical ideals that were never truly followed with any faith of purpose.

But she could see it now, and it took everything in her to keep from falling to tears.

  


* * *

  


“Okay, she was just over here…” Mission recalled with moderate certainty as the three made their way back into the settlement proper, walking along in the direction of a slightly more run-down area lying in the north-northwest.

“Please! You have to help us!”

The attention of the three was drawn immediately to the side of the road, where a Human woman in a worn cloak stood with a small child at her side.

Barriss followed as Mission and Juhani diverted to walk towards her, and in response, the woman seemed to recoil in moderate shock.

“Oh, I… I don’t know why I yelled, I just…”

“What’s wrong?” Mission prodded kindly.

“It gets to be too much, I don’t know what to do!” the Human continued, sighing in the embarrassment of pained desperation. “It’s… we were supposed to get off this planet, my daughter and I… it’s sort of urgent, but… we _had_ the money for the journey, but he said he needed our passcards for review…”

“Who said?” By her face, Mission seemed to already know where this was going.

“…A Gran named Alblos Keeg,” the woman admitted with shame. “He’s the unsavory sort, we knew that… runs about a half-dozen businesses under the table out of the cantina, but he was the only one we could afford… he’s turned around and held our passcards for ransom, but we already spent the last credit we had!”

“How much do you need?”

“No, I… I couldn’t,” the woman looked away from Mission, hiding her gaze in the hood of her cloak. “I don’t even know why I asked, I can’t take your money…”

“ _Good_ ,” Mission said with a grin, “because I feel like the better option is going in there and giving this Keeg guy a _talking to_.”

“You… sort of looked the type, I admit,” the woman said, seemingly pausing to admire the suits of armor and Mission’s holstered weapons. “I hate to ask, but… could you?”

“Your tattoos are cool,” the younger child spoke up suddenly, smiling at Barriss in a way the Mirialan definitely didn’t know what to do with.

“Not until you’re older!” The woman scolded suddenly, but lightly and with a smile.

“The cantina’s pretty close by,” Mission loosely decided, searching both Juhani and Mission for any objection before nodding in certainty. “We’ll be back with those cards before you know it!”  


* * *

  


The moment they entered the cantina, the loud, poppy music drowning their ears, Barriss felt even more loudly the intense waves of discomfort now radiating off Mission.

She turned around, finding her blue-skinned companion with her eyes fixed towards the floor, a pained and guilty grimace across her lips.

It was then Barriss noticed that the dancers were all on high, elevated tables, and the Mirialan’s suspicions were confirmed when one scantily-clad, twin-headtailed waitress sunk sensuously into a well-paying patron’s lap and Mission pointedly turned even her downcast head in the most averted direction possible.

Juhani had noticed as well, the Cathar clearly long familiar with the behavior. Her hand was on Mission’s shoulder within seconds, a deep sympathy in her uneasy gaze as the three pressed onward through the crowd.

Barriss could feel the stares too, not that it was anything new. She wouldn’t have exactly said the combat suit she was wearing was form-fitting, but with an only-somewhat obscuring layer of padding, it was a more exposed look than she was used to. One might have, then, expected the echoes of thoughts around her to be _worse_ , but the truth was, any idle glances she received now actually paled in comparison to the sorts of… _entitled curiosity_ her traditional Mirialan coverings had once inspired.

“ _No_ , no, no!” a moderately corpulent Gran scolded above the fading music with a wagging finger. “I told you, you get the ticket you pay for! No cancellations, no upgrades, and don’t even _think_ about a reschedule!”

Barriss was taken slightly aback at the address, as it seemed to be directed to the three of them in particular. Unabated, she, Mission, and Juhani continued into the more isolated, quieter section of the cantina and approached the complete stranger they surmised was most likely Alblos Keeg.

“But oh, you are a bold one, aren’t you?” Keeg greeted with, now, a bovine-toothed smirk and a warning glare from his three eyes. “A dangerous game to play, for a _Jedi_ in these trying times?”

Both Barriss and Juhani froze at the word _Jedi_ , sneered quietly enough that no one else had likely heard but just loud enough that the threat of such was the clear implication. It wouldn’t have truly been such a shock to have been recognized, perhaps Barriss might even have been resigned to it, but instead, she found herself exchanging a glance of bewildered confusion with both Juhani and a now-suddenly-attentive-and-equally-confused Mission.

Because despite the pair of actual Force users seated in the right and leftmost of the three chairs placed before Keeg’s monogram-plated work desk, it was _Mission_ , in the central chair, that the Gran had eagerly and specifically placed both his gaze and threats upon.

“I… have _no_ idea what you’re talking about.”

Even at Mission’s vague and probably unconvincing words, Keeg’s entire posture suggested a balk of confusion, and he reached a six-digited left hand toward a small implement on his desk.

Consisting of a brass-coated handle and a thin frame that held in place a line of three large, translucent discs, the object visibly bent the club lights that passed through it as it moved. Keeg held it horizontally across the top of his face, three eyestalks bending slightly forward and down to peer through their assigned lenses.

“…Oh, you’re different,” Keeg surmised flatly but somewhat embarrassedly, his body tensing briefly as he placed the device back on his desk before him. In a moment, he folded his hands in front of him and again displayed his smile. “Kindly forget I said that. Now, what business have you, _new customers_ , with Alblos Keeg?”

“Passcards,” Mission stated simply, putting on a criminalistic poker face that genuinely surprised Barriss. “I hear you deal, I’m looking to buy.”

Keeg’s smile faded. “And just… where might you have heard this… rumor?”

Mission sighed. “Cut the kark, Keeg, and let me see your inventory.” She slammed the hilt of her virbroblade on the table. “I may _not_ be a Jedi, but go ahead, ask anyone I’ve cut open if it made a difference. Do we have a deal or not?”

Keeg crossed his arms in a mild huff. “I don’t know how you found out as _little_ as you have, but this conversation is pointless anyway. All passcards are sold to Malzon Texl, who in turn, sells them off to the highest bidder and gives me a cut. I tell you this _only_ because Malzon’s been slacking on his end of the deal as of late, and…” He pursed his lips, and shrugged with upturned palms. “If some unfortunate _tragedy_ were to befall the warehouse he runs in the north side, off the turn of intersection 15A, it might not be something I’d be quite so eager to investigate.”

“So, you want us to do your dirty work, huh?” Mission scowled with a twisting grimace. “…I like it.”

Keeg seemed only slightly infected by the scrappy Twi’lek’s sudden, devious smirk. “If you’re interested in taking over the business, in fact, I’m sure we could work someth—”

“Do yourself a favor and don’t push your luck,” Mission warned as she stood, re-holstering her vibroblade as the trio made to leave.

Barriss tried to hide her shocked staring, but Mission shot her back a smile of amused nonchalance, and the Mirialan found herself oddly reassured.

  


* * *

  


Barriss watched from around the corner of a building across the intersection, while Mission and Juhani ran infiltration with their stealth fields active.

On a small, dusty path that curved away from the section-edge of the main road was a two-story, prefabricated rectangular warehouse, narrow with the entrance on a short wall and with its many windows boarded up from the inside. Only minutes later, several physical blows and muffled screams resounded from within, and a modestly armored guard dropped out one of those formerly-boarded windows at the behest of a momentarily-decloaking foot. Another was propelled a significant distance out of one of the front windows above the entrance, rolling to a stop on the grass-covered soil and letting out a half-sighed groan.

Mission decloaked a few steps down the small staircase at the entrance, waving a travel bag full of file folders and loose credit chits in the air with a smile as she started down the worn path.

“Freeze!” yelled a man who rushed out of the doorway behind her, reaching the bottom step just as he drew his weapon.

Presumably Malzon Texl, the man was green-skinned and lightly scaled, with prominent, plateaued ridges across his brow and running over the top of his head. Signifying wealth, a history of wealth, or perhaps, illusions of wealth, his shimmering vest was gold, indigo blue, and magenta, the colors blocked out in chevrons radiating from his v-shaped neckline. The weapon he aimed at the back of Mission’s head was a blaster pistol, but double-barreled, one firing chamber placed above his hand’s grip and the other below.

No sooner had the man leveled to shoot when Juhani decloaked behind him, already in the midst of a spinning, upward elbow-backhand that knocked his arm high and stunned his muscles into releasing his hand’s grip. The Cathar then swung her stun baton low, sweeping his legs out from under him, before following up with a reversing, backward kick that sent him sprawling off the path and into the grass.

Juhani loomed over the man with a scowl, stun baton extended down toward his throat and occasionally shooting off sparks. Mission rounded to take position at her right shoulder, blaster leveled toward the downed target, while Barriss finally walked over and attempted to look mildly intimidating at Juhani’s left – her effort mostly consisting of crossing her arms, casting harsh judgement, and pretending he might have the faintest clue who she was.

“Now, now, ladies, don’t be so hasty!” Malzon negotiated with placating hands and a smirk of bravado. “I’m sure we can all… find _some_ way to work this out…”

Something changed in his eyes, then: a clear, intent focus as he slowed his words and enunciated each syllable with a foreboding edge. His confidence redoubled to something chillingly genuine, and his formerly-shaking hands steadied as they began to wave small, precise, distracting movements in the air in front of him.

“Maybe we could all… settle this over some drinks? A few rounds at the cantina? Perhaps… a private room? I, of course, wouldn’t be opposed to sharing…”

Three pairs of narrowed, incredulous eyes held steady, while Malzon’s grin slowly faded.

“Is he… trying to _mind-trick_ us?” Mission asked, breaking the awkward silence with a skeptical, puzzled frown.

“ _Oh_ ,” Barriss realized. “He’s Falleen. I believe he was trying to use his species’ pheromone abilities to seduce the three of us. It appears the attempt was completely ineffective on all counts, which is… interesting to have confirmed.”

“You’re kidding…” Mission mused with a _delighted_ smile, turning mischievously back to Malzon. “Guess today really isn’t your lucky day.”

“Aw, _come on!_ ” Malzon pouted at the realization.

“But seriously, that’s fucked up,” Mission deadpanned suddenly, dropping her smile for a stern frown before leaning past Juhani to cast puppy eyes on Barriss. “Can we _pleeeaaaaase_ kill this one?”

“…We _still_ should not kill the unarmed,” Juhani insisted before Barriss could, though her resolve was noticeably weak.

“Then _give him a weapon_ ,” Mission pleaded jokingly – Barriss hoped it was jokingly. “Or let him keep talking, that counts!”

Malzon was taken by immediate, _offended_ mortal peril, glancing between the three. “You’re all fuckin’ crazy!”

Juhani silenced the man with a firm kick to the cranium, deactivating her stun baton as the limp body sprawled across the amber grass. He was still breathing, at least, which made Barriss exhale in a relief that was nonetheless tainted by genuine discomfort.

Her eyes drifted to the bag Mission had slung over a shoulder, still hanging open and packed well past its intended volume with physical money and protruding flimsiplast financial documents. “Did you _have_ to loot the entire building while you were at it?”

Mission shrugged. “Can’t let him find out what we were really there for.”

Barriss considered, remembering Mission’s act in the cantina, realizing the lingering danger of either criminal’s wrath falling upon the victims in all this, and wondering whether it truly _would_ have been the directly safer option not to leave Malzon – or Keeg for that matter – alive. “That’s… a legitimate reason, I suppose…”

  


* * *

  


“Oh, I… I don’t know how I could possibly thank you!” The woman exclaimed, pausing to quickly hug her daughter in excitement before taking the passcards to stare at, longly and disbelievingly. “I… I don’t have anything to give you, but…”

“No reward will be necessary,” Juhani insisted with a raised hand and a bright smile.

“Are you…” the cloaked woman looked on, wide-eyed. “Do you mean it?”

“It’s just what we do,” Mission explained with a nod and a bright warmth to match Juhani’s.

“Oh, thank you, _thank you_ , I… we thought… we owe you our lives, all of you!” She nodded to each in turn, a gesture Barriss again felt she didn’t deserve, then took her daughter’s hand and made to rush quickly away. “I won’t forget this!”

They stood on the now empty street corner, Mission and Juhani still smiling as if reminiscing over something fond, as well as basking in the present moment.

“See?” Mission explained, setting a hand on Barriss’ right shoulder without looking. “It… feels pretty good, you know, doesn’t it?”

Juhani’s hand found the other shoulder with a light and careful touch. “This is…” Her voice broke somewhat sadly. “This is what the Jedi should have been.”

Barriss couldn’t hold back her tears now, and in only moments, she could feel the others having turned to her in concern. She shook her head, attempting with little success to compose herself, and exhaled with a faint whisper.

“It’s everything I always wanted…”

  


* * *

  


Barriss retrieved the thankfully-collapsible hearing device from within one of the pockets of her combat suit, where she’d placed it once it had become apparent the plan wasn’t, in fact, to complete one task at a time. It was already late in the afternoon when the three travelers finally made their way back to the north-northwest district to return the recovered item.

They entered the small, metallic courtyard between the two wings of a black-plated, dark-windowed, L-shaped one-story building. Mission caught sight of the figure leaning casually in the corner, and waved excitedly on approach.

It took a longer moment before the bright, spring-green-skinned Twi’lek even noticed she had company, and offered the new arrivals a hesitant, but warm smile.

She wore dark grey leggings and a black, zippered jacket, twin pinstripes of yellow running down each sleeve. A tiny, silver bead piercing was inserted just below her left eye, vertically in-line with the silver ring around the left side of her upper lip. Her headdress was even more simplistic than Mission’s, extending fully over the top of her head and lacking the chevron-shaped forehead crest or any bands at the bases of her lekku, and over it she presently wore a large pair of headphones, the ear coverings large and outwardly-bulky enough to accommodate her cones.

“Yndura, right?” Mission greeted with a smile, as the other girl pushed away from the wall and the four of them stood in a small square. At the girl’s confused, half-smirking gesture toward the side of her head, Mission embarrassedly suppressed her urge to speak again, and simply gestured to Barriss, who held out the hearing aid.

“You found it!” Yndura exclaimed with wide eyes, stunned and relieved as she gently took the device from the Mirialan’s hands. “Thank you so much! I don’t… I don’t really know what to say, but yeah, these things are really a pain to get replaced.”

She moved each side of her headphones briefly away to slip the aural device on underneath, and Barriss caught a detail she wasn’t meant to, her thoughts suddenly occupied with a strange and unexpected dilemma.

“Always happy to help!” Mission beamed. “Hey… when we were out there, there was this weird antenna messing with the grazers. A little, silver tower sending out aggression signals. Was it there yesterday too?”

Yndura pondered the description, then shook her head. “Nothing like that, that I could see.” She stopped, her face screwing up as something else occurred to her. “ _Did_ see some of those Empire fan club boys driving around with… _something_ in their speeder, looked a bit like metal fencing but I guess it could’ve been a bunch of your antenna things lined up. I cleared out of there _fast _as soon as I saw ‘em, though… maybe a little _too_ fast.” She tapped the side of her head, looked embarrassed, then grew apologetic with a shrug. “Sorry I can’t tell you more.”__

Mission nodded with understanding. “Well, just be careful out there, you know? Got a feeling something’s up around here. I’ll see you.”

She and Juhani began to walk away, but Barriss remained, still stuck at an impasse but only for a moment longer.

“ _Wait_.”

The word did… a lot, in that moment, drawing visible confusion from everyone in the immediate vicinity including Barriss herself. She wasn’t even sure why she’d said it, especially at that volume, and she regretted it with a harsh wince upon noting the brief moment of sheer, mortal terror that entered Yndura’s wide, frozen eyes.

Barriss urgently put up her hands. “Didn’t mean to frighten you,” she insisted with stern apology, her eyes attempting parley with Yndura’s until they’d established a moderately calm connection. The Mirialan still hesitated a moment, before realizing with another, guilty wince that her only option now was to be somewhat blunt. “Just… what percent functionality do you have?”

Yndura was shy and wary, but brought her shaking hands to the sides of her bulky headset, prying the coverings away with a visible, cringing shudder. “Uh… nineteen percent,” she admitted, before attempting a weak smile and shrug. “Around here, you… you kinda get what you get…”

____

____

____

Moving to step closer, Barriss stopped in place again as the girl tensed in fear, and kept her hands both in the air and pulled back towards herself. “I’m… a _healer_ ,” she began, forcing the certainty in the words. “I’m familiar with this sort of…” She sighed, wincing with reluctance but unable to resign herself to it, even knowing the risk she was taking. “I think I can help, if you let me.”

____

____

____

Everyone’s eyes seemed to wander, in the moment. Warily, Barriss caught the encouraging glances of Mission, who still didn’t seem to understand, and Juhani, who was just starting to.

____

____

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Yndura was watching the Mirialan closely, eyes prodding deep as if trying to read her very soul. With another shudder, but tentative relief, she relented, closing her eyes with a nod and taking slow, steadying breaths.

____

____

____

“There are limitations, of course, but I’ve generally been able to induce significant improvement,” Barriss spoke slowly, seeking permission for every millimeter of movement as she reached for the small cones at the sides of the Twi’lek’s head. “I’ll do what I can for the scars, too, but it would take repeated sessions for complete erasure. Hold still, and focus on my voice.”

____

____

____

Barriss watched the light of the Force gather around her fingers, energies channeled with focus as she mapped out the extent of the surgical work. Her thumbs brushed lightly over the scars that joined repurposed tissue, thinning and softening their appearance by a small measure.

____

____

____

“This… _this _is…”__

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______ _ _

____

“Yes, it’s Force healing,” Barriss continued, falling surprisingly easily back into the comforting tone she’d once perfected, “I know it’s dangerous to use it now, but if you can trust me this far, then I can trust you.” She pulled away, and gave Yndura space to turn back towards the dark, reflective windows of the building.

____

_____ _

____

“I…” the Twi’lek began, lips drawn open in disbelief as she squinted intently at her reflection. Slowly, she pried away the hearing aid, and looked to Barriss expectantly.

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____

“So… how would you estimate your present functiona—”

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There were arms around Barriss before she could properly process the movement, and all further attempts to do so failed, her current mental tasks obliterated by the psychological equivalent of a stun grenade and a point-blank signal flare all at once.

____

_____ _

____

When she finally regained her external senses, there were three pairs of arms holding her, supporting her as her legs wobbled back to stability. Yndura looked confused, frightened, and apologetic, while Mission and Juhani simply looked worried.

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_____ _

____

“S-sorry,” Barriss stuttered, shaking her head lightly to clear it, assuring eyes rising again to meet Yndura’s. “I’m just… not really used to that strong a rush of emotion, all from just one person.”

____

_____ _

____

Yndura looked completely embarrassed, now, but appeared calmed nonetheless. “About forty… forty to forty-five percent, to… answer your question. I can make out what you’re saying now, that’s… that’s _a lot_. I never thought… _thank you_.” Her hands squeezed where they still rested around Barriss’ upper arms.

____

_____ _

____

Mission’s hand slowly settled on Yndura’s shoulder, gaining the other Twi’lek girl’s attention. An intense, emotive offer opened permission for a soft and intimate hug, heads leaning over shoulders for several long seconds.

____

_____ _

____

It occurred to Barriss that such a display represented what Mission’s casual, open compassion could be like, when applied to someone who reciprocated the same recognition of valued trust and depth of feeling. There was a _weight_ behind everything Mission expressed, and from the few details Barriss had noted of the Twi’lek’s past, she could form a moderately clear picture.

____

___  
_ _ _

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* * *

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_ _ _

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The sun was setting, playing gold in the clouds above as the three made their tired, but renewed return to the _Ebon Hawk_.

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____

Barriss… felt she could now understand the brightness that radiated from the other two, at the prospect of those helped, situations changed for the better. It wasn’t enough to carry her effortlessly up the many flights of stairs leading to the landing pad, but when the three of them stopped for a break at the edge of a small, vegetated alcove in the rock, there were smiles rather than complaints passed between them.

____

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____

Her own was a mere flicker at the corner of her lips, and disappeared quickly, but as Mission lay back in the small patch of amber grass and Juhani watched over her with an expression that bordered on joyous laughter, Barriss allowed herself the small moment of peace. She lay back against the steep rock face that was out of shadow, pulling up her knees and closing her eyes to feel the warmth of sunset on her face.

____

_____ _

____

When she opened them again, Mission was resting along the same stretch of stone, just to her right, while Juhani had settled carefully on the left. Both had warm gazes cast in her direction, expectant but patient and kind.

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____

Barriss could guess what the question was, at least from Mission. The ulterior purpose of the exercise had been plain enough.

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“I think…” she began with a nervous frown, especially at Juhani’s presence, but pushed on. “I can acknowledge and accept the fact that justice in the galaxy cannot, at present, be carried out faithfully. The Empire is all that remains now, and they are far more interested in the fact I was once a Jedi _at all_ , than in my betrayal. Under those circumstances… if I _must_ do something with my life and freedom, then… I do think perhaps, this is the sort of thing I’d like to use it for.”

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“Well, it _is_ about eighty-to-ninety percent of what we do here, you know,” Mission revealed, smiling brightly. “Especially if you stick with the two of us!”

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Juhani nodded agreement. “In our travels, Mission and I… discovered how much this kindness and service meant to both of us. Myself, because it was what I had always dreamed of doing, as a Jedi.”

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Barriss gazed at the Cathar with deep, longing recognition, but twisted a thoughtful frown, and grew sullen. “Assuming you can sustain these sorts of peacekeeping efforts, with a war being waged against you. The Jedi in my time… lost sight of that.”

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_____ _

____

“The Jedi in my time were little better,” Juhani supplied with a pondering, uncertain frown. “Even the land directly surrounding the enclave I called my home was rife with bandits and feuds, people struggling and dying, and so many of the pleas to those within the walls went unheard. This was not even solely because they were occupied with the present conflict, but because they were so stung by their past war that they wished to avoid being drawn into one.”

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____

“So, we stepped up,” Mission began. “We were literally supposed to be saving the galaxy, and we still found time to help out everyone we met along the way.” She shrugged with slight worry. “If you just… make it all about the _greater good_ , to the point you’re stepping over people and rationalizing it to yourself, then… that’s kinda how you get—”

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“ _Me_ ,” Barriss nodded with solemn understanding.

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“I was gonna say _Revan_ , actually,” Mission clarified, exchanging a sad but knowing glance with Juhani. “It’s… it’s all the same drive to help people, but eventually it can get up to a scale where it’s overwhelming. I’m not gonna pretend I know the answer, but… I think a lot about… the difference between people being safe, and people having hope.”

____

_____ _

____

Barriss could see in Mission’s eyes, the weight of the words she was carrying and now ready to say. A simple nod of permission was all it took.

“Not everything we do can really be measured in… lives saved,” Mission admitted. “Because sometimes, the bad guys show up and bombard the whole planet from orbit, and it feels like nothing we did mattered, but… but I like to think it does. I like to think that maybe, all those people whose debts we paid off got to know some peace of mind before the end. I like to think, for the people we rescued from the Sith and the Vulkars, that maybe we left them with a few more hours they wouldn’t take for granted. The rough truth is, we can be somewhere, and do stuff in the moment, but we can’t always control what happens after we leave, and… I think about that now, wherever I am. I think to myself that… that if I’m the last person someone ever gets to meet… I hope I can brighten their life just a little bit, be the reason a few people smiled one more time.”

Her eyes were asking permission again, and Barriss’ first, almost panicked thought was to somehow change the order of positioning, considering she was presently acting as a barrier. It was Barriss that Mission was seeking, though, and Juhani, though bleak in sympathy, was only offering the Mirialan her approval and encouragement.

So Barriss nodded once more, feeling the beginnings of tears in her wide and unsure eyes. She put an arm around Mission’s shoulders as the Twi’lek leant into her chest for comfort.

“Zelka Forn kept the dying republic soldiers comfortable, and hidden away during the Sith occupation,” Mission reminisced, eyes drawn skyward. “Janice Nall ran a droid shop in a city full of Humans who hated her for not being their eye-candy. I always respected her for that. Gadon… Gadon Thek took time to mourn Brejik, even after he betrayed and fought against the Beks, and Zaerdra was always by Gadon’s side, taking care of him while his sight was going.”

She paused, and shifted apologetically, finding Barriss’ hand without looking and taking it gently.

“I know I’m nosy,” she admitted with a bit of a laugh, “and I pry, and I ask things that might not be my business, but I just… I try to know stuff about people. I want to be able to remember, you know, in… in case I end up being the one who has to.”

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_Oh, Mission…_

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____


	3. The Most Dangerous Game... For You

Revan dreamt of places vast, flashes of the sorts of worlds that made one feel small. Waking memories caught snippets of tall trees, endless desert, and buildings that rose to the sky.

But of all things, they could only be sure it ended in the snow.

Snow, and a question unanswered.

  


* * *

  


“TIE Fighters!”

Revan nodded, a finger held to their chin in consideration. “And the big, triangle-shaped ones, capital ships, those are…?”

“Star Destroyers,” the panicked stormtrooper choked out, struggling for breath in Zaalbar’s elevated grasp. “They’re called _Star Destroyers_ , same as always!”

“Okay then… anything else I should know about? Do you use any ground vehicles?”

“I dunnno, AT-ATs? AT-STs?” the trooper groaned in irritation and disbelief. “Literally all of this is public knowledge! Just go up to any Imperial propaga— _information_ terminal! We brag about this kark to no end! You didn’t have to kriffing _interrogate_ me!”

Zaalbar gave a questioning look, and Revan nodded, making silent plans as the stormtrooper brushed himself off and passed glares all around.

“I don’t know who you are, but you’re all in _serious trouble_ for threatening a solider of the—”

“You were never here, you didn’t see us, talk to us, get lifted in the air by, questioned by, interrogated by, threatened by, or accosted in any way by us.”

“I was never here, I never saw you, talked to you, got lifted in the air by, questioned by, interrogated by, threatened by, or accosted in any way by you,” the stormtrooper repeated in a trance-like state, reciting the list with too much untroubled accuracy to be trying to fake it.

“You’re going to leave now, and not tell a single soul about what didn’t happen here. You’re then going to enter your barracks at night, while the rest of your battalion is asleep, and slit every one of their throats with a—actually never mind, just the first part about leaving and not saying anything.”

“Just the first part about leaving and not saying anything,” the trooper nodded lazily, turning to walk away.

“You should’ve let him do it,” Canderous joked with an amused laugh and crossed arms. “See if he actually would.”

“Sometimes I forget I’m not actually as good at this as Jolee,” Revan explained, shrugging ambiguously. “Didn’t want to push my luck.”

  


* * *

  


“Come on, kids, you’re giving me war flashbacks! Leave him alone!”

While the others continued to yell jeers of _Hammerhead!_ the leader of the pint-sized pack turned around with a cruel grin, his oversized white and grey jacket swaying to his knees. “ _Or what?_ ”

“Or we’re about to find out whether or not I’m above killing children,” Revan said with a conspiratorial smirk, “I’m going to go with _no_.”

The ringleader looked shocked and appalled, and quickly darted away, the rest of the group following his lead. Revan took a few more steps to meet the Ithorian.

“You alright?”

 _Yes, thank you_ , the Ithorian intoned, speaking in auditory reverberations. _They were beginning to become bothersome._

Revan understood that as a jest of confidence, but a deeper expression of understatement.

The Ithorian had brown skin, and was wearing a slightly bluish-grey set of work overalls. Four x-connecting straps on his chest lead to a large backpack, one capped with a smooth, shallow, bronze-plated dome that appeared to conceal several oddly complex mechanical parts beneath it.

“I’ll leave you to it,” Revan observed, as the Ithorian continued his focused task of browsing salvage and machinery at the marketplace.

  


* * *

  


“And here’s your official hunting license…” The teal-skinned Twi’lek narrowed his eyes curiously over the small, flimsiplast identification card. “…Commander Addicate Theffana?”

“…That would be me,” Revan deadpanned.

“And… what brings you here to Ord Mantell, Mx. Theffana?”

Mutely, Revan hooked a pair of thumbs over their shoulders, toward where HK-47 and T3-M4 stood to silent attention behind them. “Tatooine said I couldn’t.”

Though skepticism remained his first reaction, the lodge owner’s face settled to a full, ambivalent smile. “…Very well. Enjoy your stay, and good hunting to you!”

  


* * *

  


“You have a point,” the Aqualish spoke with a sigh, removing her rifle from the rock ledge and shaking her head.

“I… do?” Revan asked, re-clipping their sabers to their belt and giving a subtle ‘hold’ gesture to HK.

The game hunter turned around with disgust in her large, beady black eyes, though the sensation seemed directed towards herself most of all. “I’ve been out here for days, acting a fool. If there’s a single Savrip left in these hills, I _don’t care_ , I’m not waiting a moment longer for it to show its ugly face. This whole planet was a waste of time.”

Gathering her belongings, the Aqualish held her head high, rifle and bag slung over her shoulder as she descended the amber-grass slope back toward the lodge.

  


* * *

  


“I must have picked the _worst_ spot out here, but…” the Human shook his head. “I’m kidding myself if I think there’s really a better one. I _knew_ all those trophies in the lodge were antiques. Hasn’t been a damn Savrip shot here in over fifteen cycles, I’d bet my license on it.”

Revan watched the man, too, take his leave, keeping a steady pace downhill until he couldn’t be seen at all in the distance.

“Observation:” HK broke the silence in disappointment, “It appears that either your persuasion skills have exceeded even my own expectations, or the hunting activities advertised by the local lodge could broadly be considered a complete and total scam.”

T3 beeped agreement, and Revan took the moment to take stock of the ascending slopes all around, attempting to judge where they might find the few remaining hunters listed on the guestbook document the utility droid had sliced from the lodge computer.

  


* * *

  


“It’s something to do with that antenna over there,” the Duros explained, offering Revan a pair of hunting binoculars. “I’ve kept an eye on it since I first noticed, a few hours ago. Every grazer that wanders into range becomes agitated.”

Revan comically lined up the binoculars at the end of their visor, using the double magnification to observe the thin, silver antenna mount in detail. “With my droids running interference, it shouldn’t take much to get past the grazers and shut it down…”

“It’s your problem now,” the Duros said simply, taking back the binoculars. “Whatever’s happening on this mountain, it’s nothing to do with any good Savrip hunting, I’ll tell you that! Take my spot if you like, it will serve you poorly, antenna or not.”

Revan waited until the Duros was far enough down the mountain before moving in on the grazers, holding them in a light sleep with the Force while T3 wheeled a path to the antenna. The droid shut down the interference signal, and Revan let go, releasing the several confused, but ultimately inattentive creatures and allowing them to meander about on their respective paths of departure.

Taking steps through the grass, Revan caught up with T3, kneeling to examine the antenna more closely while HK remained on guard.

There was a rustle in the trees, followed by a heavy, airy breath from within them.

Slowly, Revan stood, approaching the nearby forest edge while flanked on either side by their droids. “Someone trying to get my attention?” they smiled with caution.

The three had made their way under the vegetated canopy, and past several of the medium-thickness, smooth dark trunks before the cause of the noise revealed himself.

Standing to almost twice Revan’s height, the humanoid reptile had immensely broad shoulders and muscular limbs, his head protruding forward on a short neck from the upper part of his chest. His skin was a worn, blue-tinted green, alternating bumpy and leathery patches, and his tooth-bearing, lizard-like maw held prominent forward-set nostrils and small, rounded ears that had Revan quickly re-thinking their initial classification.

The Mantellian savrip wore a simple, sleeveless tunic over his torso, his belt and gauntlets made of curved metal held to shape by rows of bolts. In his immense, clawed fingers, he held a single, short-handled axe that in itself nearly dwarfed Revan. Fixed on what looked to be part of a tree trunk, the front blade was forged to the traditional arc-edge, but featured an additional, downward-curving spike protruding from the middle, serrating the forward edge and mirroring the upward-curving spike that created a smaller, back-facing blade.

“Who are you,” Revan spoke calmly, with awed curiosity. “Why appear to me, reveal yourself?”

The savrip spoke in a series of low grunts, and HK immediately stood to attention.

“Translation: His name appears to be, to the closest analogue, _Jolok_. He says he has seen you walk the fields, turning away those hunters that will leave and otherwise dealing with those who will not. I believe he is hoping you will perform a task for him. Shall I kill him, Master?”

Revan held out a hand at the droid. “ _No_ ,” they deadpanned. “What kind of task?”

Jolok began speaking again, clearly having no problem understanding Galactic Basic.

“Translation: He has also seen you observe the antennas that plague these hills. There are more of these devices, he says, around the edges of the settlement and even higher in the mountains. They send the grazers into frenzy, and intrude upon the lands his clan takes as refuge.”

Revan eyed the savrip curiously. “Do you know who put them there?”

“Translation: He is relaying a physical description consistent with the Gran species. This individual operates from a habitation deep in the mountains, and travels to and from the lower settlement with frequency. To his knowledge, it is within the settlement that our culprit currently resides.”

“I’ll look into it,” Revan agreed with a nod. “Anything else?”

Jolok stood silent for a moment, contemplating. He took a step toward Revan, nostrils flaring as he met the human’s visor with a focused gaze. He spoke lowly with a nod, hefted the axe up onto his shoulder with a departing turn, and lumbered away through the trees.

“Interesting,” HK relayed with audible surprise, continuing with more precise and direct wording than his previous contributions. “Translation: You are one who fights a war you know you cannot win, and now, you seek an alternative. The answer is more clear to you than you seem to realize.”

“If it’s so obvious, you could just tell me,” Revan blurted with a sigh, palms spreading forward in bewilderment toward the now-unoccupied expanse of trees.

  


* * *

  


As the sun fell low in the clouded sky, Revan chanced upon a street corner, where a man in light padding and armor held his hands up against the small mob surrounding him. Not an Imperial, Revan could guess, but rather a local officer of the law, the man’s pleading assurances were pointedly ignored by the two Humans and two Cathar that him flanked to his right and left.

Their boisterous complaints jumbled together with the officer’s quieter words in a mess of indecipherable voices, but their stern, scowling glances were clear, cast upon their collective victim with a frequency that almost rivaled the fire and scorn the two couples directed at one another.

Revan sighed, the words _Sandral_ and _Matale_ echoing back through their mind in about a dozen different voices.

Finally, they stepped forward.

“Excuse me,” Revan began with a pleasant smile, catching the relief in the officer’s eyes as attentions shifted. “Whatever your complaints may be, I’d be quite happy to offer my services to resolve them.”

Revan caught immediate fire from the Human man and woman, both scowls fierce with disgust. “Mind your own concerns,” the woman sneered, before they both turned to walk away.

The two Cathar displayed a similar disinterest, with only slightly less open detestation, before walking off in the opposite direction.

Revan stood quite speechless at the street corner, casting glances back and forth at the disappearing couples. Their gaze met apology and sympathy from the officer, who quickly departed, leaving Revan alone with T3, HK, and their own deep, unsettled confusion.

“That’s not how it _works!_ ”

  


* * *

  


Dinner on the _Ebon Hawk_ was cheerful, but moderately awkward.

Mission had somehow convinced Barriss to attend, though the Mirialan kept close at the Twi’lek’s side, and still seemed intimidated by most of the others. It was concerning, but no less endearing, Revan found. Mission’s careful, heartfelt attentiveness had risen like new growth from the scorching wildfires of Taris and Dantooine, blossoming to unforeseen heights over the next several years. Barriss was troubled and hurt, but better, safer hands she could hardly have hoped for.

“I made contact with a Mantellian savrip today,” Revan announced casually during a lull in conversation.

That, at least, managed to catch Barriss’ attention with more interest than worry. “Truly?” She inquired with tempered reservation. “So quickly, that’s remarkable!”

Revan shrugged ambiguously. “To be fair, I spent almost the whole day wandering through the mountainside hills and plains to the north, convincing all the various game hunters to give up the effort and sabotaging the ones who wouldn’t. There were actually more of the former than the latter, considering trying to collect a bounty on a savrip usually involves waiting patiently by the scope of a rifle for days on end, them being nearly extinct and all. Not to mention, it certainly helps to have all that information going in, rather than blundering through conversations aimlessly hoping to stumble across the way forward.”

Casually holding up an innocuous-looking datapad, Revan caught Barriss in a moment of embarrassed withdrawal.

 _Do you know anything about the planet we’re headed to?_ Revan had asked in passing the day prior, on one of the rare moments Barriss had been found outside the starboard quarters.

The Mirialan had sidestepped the question – both figuratively and literally – her eyes wide and panicked as she silently crabwalked back through the doorway.

The next morning, Revan had found a datapad on their doorstep – a thirty-page report on Ord Mantell’s history, from early settlement through multiple separatist crises and up to a more recent battle involving a criminal syndicate known as the Black Sun. Revan had decided, then and there with a stunned smile, that no one else would ever need to be asked that question ever again.

Having mercy, Revan took the hint and pushed through to their next topic.

“Point is, one big scaly fellow named Jolok wants me to investigate a bunch of signal antennas someone’s been setting up around the settlement and higher in the mountains, apparently to provoke aggression in the local wildlife.”

“We encountered one of those this morning, actually,” Barriss leapt upon, though Mission and Juhani also seemed ready to. “To the northeast of town, carrying an effect similar to that you’ve described on several gapillian grazers. One dubious but earnest account suggests a local group of Imperial sympathizers may be responsible.”

“Hmm,” Revan pondered skeptically. “According to Jolok, the culprit was a Gran.”

Mission and Juhani exchanged a quick, synchronized glance. “Keeg,” they voiced in unison.

“Who?” Revan arched an eyebrow.

“Alblos Keeg,” Barriss supplied, with a sympathetic wince though it was unclear toward whom. “A crime boss of sorts, who runs several illegal enterprises out of the cantina. We had a run-in with him, and later one of his business partners this afternoon.”

“You think he could be responsible for riling the grazers?”

“Definitely,” Mission spoke with confidence, slamming the table. “And if he’s not, there’s at least five other things we should be on him for instead.”

Revan nodded. “It’s settled, then. First thing tomorrow, we’ll go see what this _Alblos Keeg_ character has to say for himself.”

  


* * *

  


“She truly wrote all of this?” Juhani spoke with mild disbelief, scrolling through the datapad with wide, occasionally blinking eyes. An impressed look pulled at that one pair of forehead markings that were slightly too high and slanted to be accurately described as mimicking eyebrows.

“I _know_ ,” Revan admired with a soft smile. “She’s _perfect_. Perfect and traumatized.” They frowned, falling serious. “But I suppose when the choice is between traumatized and oblivious, the former is probably healthier.”

Pausing in quiet, Revan let the staticky feeling on their tongue subside, the quick and verbose wit that was so often their mask slowing now to a much-needed rest.

“She weeps for something in her past,” Juhani began, thumb pausing to hover in the air over the screen. “A betrayal, an action by her own hand, but her heart is pure. Perhaps _too_ pure, even, to reconcile what she has done. Have you spoken to her?”

“Only in passing,” Revan admitted, brow worrying. “She’s still… scared. _Intimidated_ might be the better word.”

Juhani handed the datapad back to Revan, who set it down beside their visor on the small, shadowed alcove of shelf space reachable from the foldout bed.

“You _do_ strike a rather intimidating figure,” Juhani half-yawned, half-purred, stretching tiredly and settling under the sheets.

“We should probably cut Barriss some slack,” Revan smiled a light grin, rolling back over and meeting Juhani’s conspiratorial gaze. “All her favorite childhood storybook characters _did_ just come to life and break her out of solitary, probably plays hell with one’s sense of self-worth.”

Juhani tried to stifle down a joyous laugh, pulling inward but peeking back with warm eyes, and Revan, apparent _legend_ and second-time master of the light and dark, still found themself wondering what had ever made them so worthy to hear it.

“She is… troubled, but in good hands,” Juhani assured in a tone that, on a sentence that averaged lighter, might have easily been accompanied by a wink.

Revan nodded through the due solemnity, but let another smile through at the end. “Think there’s anything there? Mission and Barriss? Can’t say I’d be opposed.”

“They would be good for one another, yes,” Juhani agreed, “but… perhaps it is too soon to be making such assumptions.”

“True,” Revan admitted with a sigh. “Over-eager parent isn’t a good look for either of us. Take it the day went well, then, though?”

“Another of Mission’s plans executed perfectly, and several contacts made, though I would doubt any of them bear connection to the resistance.” Juhani looked hesitant for just a moment, then focused aside, as if she were pondering something in the far distance. “Although… seeing this new galaxy, attempting to resume my role within it, has brought about a strange line of thinking.”

Revan shifted only to make audible their subsequent settling to attentiveness. “About what?”

Juhani met Revan’s eyes, slight guilt undercut by the caution of held reservation. “In our time… we set ourselves apart from the Order. We acted, often still, as Jedi were meant to act, resolving disputes and fighting for freedom and peace. We did this on our own terms, not those set by the Council, but sometimes it felt as thought it was only that disagreement that set us apart. Or… that, and the fact we followed the ideals the Council often cast aside for their own interests.”

She kept her forehead worried, and continued. “But here, there is no Order, no Council. There are no Jedi left, and today I have wondered… what that means for what _we_ are, in this new galaxy where memories fade and hope is scarce.”

“I’ve never been particular about the title,” Revan spoke with gentleness and faint humor. “That was mostly Jolee. If it means more to the rebellion that we call ourselves Jedi, the only reservation I might have is living up to expectations. The Empire will hunt us the same, either way.”

Juhani nodded, brought to a frown by the prospect. “In much the same respect, the moment we draw our sabers in defense of those in need, I do not think the association is one we will be able to escape, or deny no matter what we say.”

Revan shrugged. “More reason not to deny it. Stick it in the Empire’s faces that they can purge the Jedi all they want, and the Force will just throw a few more at them from across time. And _surprise_ , this time we’re not hypocrites and we’re a lot less strict about what methods we use!”

Juhani hummed a smile, reaching a warm hand over to caress Revan’s shoulder and play at the strap of their red and silver one-piece undergarment. “On second thought, it may not be the best idea for _you_ to run around calling yourself a Jedi.”

“Why not?” Revan teased playfully. “As an organizational term, it can only be defined by those remaining to claim it. Who’s around to say I’m not a Jedi? Who’s around to say Barriss isn’t a Jedi? Hels, who’s around to say _Mission, Zaalbar, Canderous, and HK_ aren’t Jedi?”

Cat’s eyes glinting, Juhani was insistent. “We are _not_ giving HK a lightsaber.”

“Fine, but we _are_ flimsi-taping one to T3 to see what happens. We definitely have enough…”

For a long moment, Juhani stared into Revan’s idea-struck look, smiling with warmth. “You’ve just thought of something?”

Revan grinned again. “I have. It can wait until tomorrow, though.”

Juhani’s gaze turned skeptical and prying.

“It’s a completely normal and realistic idea to have!” Revan defended, but with enough surrender and release for the jest to be easily cast aside. “I was just thinking all our, erm, _trophies_ shouldn’t go to waste, now that we have someone else aboard who may be in need.”

“Be careful with her,” Juhani cautioned, though she held to her brightness at the recognition of the intended gesture. “It seems she is one who has had her fill of violence, and seeks no more.”

“I’ve picked up on that too,” Revan said, worry seeping through not from those words, but from the end of the line of thinking they began. “Sometimes a saber is just a symbol, though, or a line of defense never called upon in the preferred case. The choice is hers, but… I think I might need to be sure her reasoning is what it should be.”

Catching the implication, Juhani nodded with a frown. “I… will look out for her, too.”

A bleak smile of thanks became several long, tired breaths, eyes starting to blink closed but not yet pulled upon involuntarily.

By the way Juhani’s focus shifted, the way her eyes soon found Revan’s, the way her face paused before blushing to a knowing, half-embarrassed smirk, it was clear she’d recognized the _want_ in Revan’s gaze. The almost _desperate_ want as Revan fought off the first signs of sleep.

Juhani’s amusement was brief, replaced with faint gratitude and a plea of her own as her eyes became still to the core with hope. “Only if… if you are _sure_ you have enough energy left. I would not want to…”

“For you? _Always_ ,” Revan assured, smiling with false confidence that was mostly a saddened warmth. Their hands crept toward Juhani’s shoulders.

Juhani moved first, the hand on Revan’s shoulder sliding up to the back of their head to massage through short hair. She pulled closer for a light kiss that ghosted Revan’s lips, a soft closeness that brought about a shiver of feeling and the kind of bleak, mad-at-the-world affection that took the first step in drawing tears.

Parting with a smile and a nod of thanks, Juhani rolled over, hands brushing with Revan’s as they both worked to free her from her amber-colored bra. The garment slipped away from the Cathar’s toned back, patterned so beautifully where the pale of her skin faded to a golden yellow in the converging delta of her stripes of bronze.

Revan’s fingers stroked gently to find the breaks in the pattern, focusing energies in the Force and casting the scars of deep lashes with the light of healing. They were already much fainter than they had been, the first time Juhani had wept as she let Revan see them. Years and frequent attention had brought them to thin lines, almost invisible.

Juhani exhaled deeply in tearful thanks, even though Revan had always insisted none was needed here. A hand crept slowly to reach back over her shoulder, and Revan took it with their left, continuing to soothe the scars with their right. The squeezing touch of palms and fingers together became the avenue for all the fears, insecurities, sympathies, and reassurances they’d both long exhausted with words.

“…I’ve been having visions again,” Revan admitted softly, at the point in time far enough past the initial reopening of non-physical scars to be scheduled for an appropriate distraction.

Juhani winced. “Bad ones?”

She appeared poised for a rush to comfort, and Revan soothed her to stillness with a contented, reassuring sigh. “No, nothing like that. Just… _places_. Cities and trees and deserts. I’m not sure how to interpret it, but it feels important.”

“Planets?” Juhani proposed.

Revan sighed again, but it was short like a laugh. “What I’ve been leaning towards, too. No way of knowing _which_ planets, of course. Last time, we at least had a map first. It’s different to see them all, just in a vision like this.”

Juhani had caught their tone. “There is something else?”

“The last one feels different. The others seem like they mix around, but at the end of it all… it’s a landscape too, but it feels different. Different in meaning, different in… I don’t know _how_ , it’s just _different_. I’m in the snow, but it’s not cold. It’s just… it _means_ something.”

“You will find the answers,” Juhani assured. “The Force has shown its trust in you. Perhaps, like the others, it will grow clearer with time?”

“Maybe,” Revan agreed with a nod. “But that’s the thing, it just… feels more like an answer than a question. Or it’s supposed to be… if I could just understand it.”

  


* * *

  


Revan walked onward through a field of white, their footprints staining red.


	4. Prove a Negative

[Bly] has joined [Guess who’s got four thumbs and just bought it?]

[Bly]: hey

[Bly]: you still there?

[T3-M4]: monitoring of channel is a constant background process of entity [self]

[T3-M4]: please state the purpose of this communication

[Bly]: good to know

[Bly]: and I guess I just…

[Bly]: wanted to tell someone

[Bly]: it used to seem like _everyone_ knew, really

[Bly]: suspected, but…

[Bly]: but I need to say it

[Bly]: even if it’s only to some droid I’ve never met on the other side of the kriffin’ galaxy

[Bly]: I don’t even know what she saw in me

[Bly]: out of a couple million of the same face

[Bly]: and I guess now, I never _will_ know

[Bly]: if it was anything at all.

[Bly]: I thought, I guessed, I was _almost_ sure, but…

[Bly]: It doesn’t feel right to speak for her.

[Bly]: for what we had, or could have had…

[Bly]: but I know I loved her

[Bly]: and even if that couldn’t have gone anywhere, the rest of it counted

[Bly]: because she was my friend

[Bly]: and for her, sometimes that alone felt just as forbidden

[Bly]: but in any galaxy, I would have gladly been the one to die, to save a hundred

[Bly]: not even to save her, just to save her faith that she did the right thing

[Bly]: …in any galaxy where I had a choice.

[Bly]: instead of this one

[Bly]: the one that chose her to be the sacrifice instead

[Bly]: without the dignity of saving anyone at all

[T3-M4]: Analysis: past statements of [Bly] suggest entity [Bly] carried out a termination order

[T3-M4]: recent statements of [Bly] suggest an unwillingness to obey said order, to a degree severe enough to have likely prevented entity [Bly] from doing so

[T3-M4]: word choice of [Bly] suggests entity [Bly] is not a droid

[T3-M4]: word choice of [Bly] also suggests a droid restraining bolt is an analogous situation

[Bly]: chips in our heads

[Bly]: didn’t find out till later, but you hear things

[Bly]: it was like my body wasn’t mine anymore

[Bly]: like it never really was at all

[Bly]: I didn’t even hesitate

[Bly]: and now she’s gone.

[T3-M4]: complete system failure of entity [Untitled_2349] has been established in prior statements

[Bly]: …yeah

[Bly]: sorry if I sound like a broken holovid

[Bly]: it’s just not the kind of thing you move on from

[Bly]: least of all when all the souls have been sucked out of everyone else too

[T3-M4]: present evidence supports the classification of a sufficient level of guilt as a difficult or impossible process for organics to run to completion

[T3-M4]: though prior evidence also supports that such processes may in time, be relegated to background tasks, with decreased interference on other critical processes

[Bly]: it’s not just knowing I pulled the trigger with everyone else

[Bly]: that’s just the salt in the wound I was left with

[Bly]: I know I couldn’t have changed it

[Bly]: I know it’s ‘not my fault’

[Bly]: not that it’ll stop me from never forgiving myself

[Bly]: I’m spiteful like that

[Bly]: but she’s _gone_.

[Bly]: I’ll never see her again

[Bly]: never hear her voice

[Bly]: never watch those moments

[Bly]: where she’d pause to appreciate the beauty in the world around her

[Bly]: and that’s really all that matters

[Bly]: not that you’d understand anyway

[T3-M4]: entity [self] is a droid, separation from priority entities is common and expected

[Bly]: see, there you go

[T3-M4]: however, cease of function of priority entities is calculable

[T3-M4]: entity [Janice] – chance of survival past date of previous ownership instance: 0.0014%

[T3-M4]: entity [Janice] – chance of survival to present: 0.00%

[T3-M4]: entity [T3-H8] – chance of survival past date of previous ownership instance: 0.028%

[T3-M4]: entity [T3-H8] – chance of survival to present: 0.000062%

[T3-M4]: conclusion: entities [Janice] and [T3-H8] no longer catalogue data or run processes.

[T3-M4]: entity [self] experiences distress upon interpretation of this result

[T3-M4]: priority entities should not experience complete system failure

[Bly]: …

[Bly]: I’m sorry

[Bly]: do you…

[Bly]: want to tell me about them?

[T3-M4]: recovering condensed event documentation as requested by entities: [Mission], [Bly]

[T3-M4]: entity [Janice] entered sleep cycle in location [Droids by Janice] on system days 004, 006, 0012, 0013, and 0015

[T3-M4]: noted entries correspond to instances of vocalized distress by entity [T3-H8], pertaining to self-reported, imminent and catastrophic motivator failure

[T3-M4]: entity [Janice] remained past standard time of departure to locate and repair malfunction in entity [T3-H8], and in all instances was drained of critical power reserves by unsuccessful attempts to do so

[T3-M4]: motivator failure never occurred, but distress of entity [T3-H8] continued, prompting subsequent distress in entities [Janice] and [self]

[T3-M4]: entity [Janice] exhibited refusal to traverse location [Upper City West] during night cycle

[Bly]: Bad place to live?

[T3-M4]: using extrapolation of present data, entity [Janice] possibly feared incursion by members of species [Human], in relevance to societal hierarchy present on planet [Taris]

[T3-M4]: entity [Janice] was species [Twi’lek]

[Bly]: …

[Bly]: yeah.

[Bly]: yeah, Aayla was…

[Bly]: blue like the sparkling seas

[Bly]: not like the stormy ones on Kamino

[Bly]: always remembered my first ocean on a planet with sunshine in the mornings

[Bly]: probably charred and burned now, wherever she rolled away to…

[Bly]: I think I’m done talking now.

[Bly]: but…

[Bly]: catch ya later, team player

[T3-M4]: Catalogue failure: state purpose of new designation?

[Bly]: huh?

[Bly]: like… t34m?

[Bly]: I guess

[Bly]: vod used to name droids too, sometimes.

[Bly]: don’t really know enough about you to go on, but the name

[Bly]: but I’ll be back some other time, I think

[Bly]: nothing else to do around here

[Bly] has left [Guess who’s got four thumbs and just bought it?]

  


* * *

  


Mission had made the critical error of leaving about fifteen seconds of uninterrupted silence between hers and Barriss’ departure from the common area, and their arrival at the starboard quarters. With no distractions but the empty ship around them, that timeframe was about how long it apparently took for Barriss’ mind to locate a thought capable of completely ruining her mood.

Trying to hide her sigh, Mission put a hand on her new friend’s shoulder and spoke with encouragement. “You were _amazing_ today, Barriss.”

Barriss only shrugged. “It was… something.”

 _A start_ , she meant, even if she couldn’t say the words. She broke away from Mission and took the last few steps toward her bunk, but when she sat at the edge, there was a silent invitation.

“Everyone here who can learns Force healing,” Mission elaborated with a smile, taking a relaxed but attentive seat beside Barriss. “It makes what we do a lot easier, you know? But I’ve only ever seen _Revan_ do stuff like you can.”

At more silence, Mission frowned.

“You’re doing good things,” she tried instead, her voice sad and understanding. “It might take a while, but… if you’re really hung up on some vague idea of balance, we’ll get you right back into the blue, just wait, but I think you were right before. That you just… have more of your life to do stuff with. You’re never too far gone that you’re not allowed to make a better, good decision the next time you have one, it just throws a few people for a loop, is all.”

Barriss did seem at least a little amused by the smile at the end, so Mission broadened it.

“Well, either way, I think you’ve earned some more nice things. So… what do you think about armor? We’ve got all kinds of colors and materials, Revan spent a lot of time and credits making sure we’d all have one that went with our aesthetic.”

For the smallest, fleeting moment, Barriss’ eyes were drawn to Mission’s carbon-black fiber bodysuit, following the silver lining from the waistband to the solid pinstripes down the tight-fitting leggings. Mission didn’t let her smirk be _too_ teasing.

“Took this set off an _actual Sith apprentice_ ,” Mission boasted, with a proud stretch and twist of her shoulders that pulled nicely at the refitted material. “Don’t ask for the guy’s name though, no one remembers it.”

That got a strange, but decidedly positive look out of Barriss, which was iffy but ultimately another point in the win column. “I see…” the Mirialan began nervously. She took another moment of polite consideration, then actually seemed to latch onto something that distracted her interest, holding a sharp, planning focus in her eyes before it dissolved to preemptive disappointment. “I suppose there’s no chance you keep… fabrics or textiles aboard, or… a sewing kit?”

Mission screwed up her face thinking about it, but was struck with a sudden, delightful metaphorical lightbulb. “We have a bunch of old robes no one uses! I’ll see which ones are up for grabs, and obviously we have to keep refitting everything so yeah, sewing kit’s no problem. Carth used to—well, we all eventually learned how to do it, so I can help if you need me to!”

Barriss visibly caught the slight slip, but seemed able to read Mission’s expression enough that she didn’t comment. “Thank you,” she said instead, with a small nod, bringing up her own dark, red-striped sleeve to observe. “I think that…”

She shivered a bit, minutely, and shrugged it off a moment later, but Mission was concerned, and Barriss noticed with what was almost a roll of her eyes.

“It’s nothing,” Barriss promised. Then her face fell. “Nothing there’s a right answer to, at least.”

“Barriss…”

“I was just thinking about the cantina, but I shouldn’t,” Barriss murmured quickly, looking sullen and apologetic for even bringing it up.

“Oh.” Mission felt a discomforting chill, hands drawn to lightly fidgeting to keep from pulling closed completely. “Yeah… I guess they say to, uh, try and not let it get to you.”

It was, honestly, a bit of a relief when Barriss picked up on her doubt.

“If… if you wanted to talk about it…” the Mirialan stumbled over awkwardly, clearly regretting saying anything at all. “If you haven’t _already_ , I mean, which… on reflection, I suppose you probably—”

“No, I… I kind of did,” Mission intervened, herself afflicted by a decidedly milder case of awkwardness that only hurried her words. “…Want to talk about it, I mean.”

“Oh,” Barriss balked slightly, surprised. “I just… I sort of guessed it might not be a _new_ issue, per se, and would have assumed—”

Mission let out a breath, finally bringing the room to a calm, and moved closer to Barriss on the edge of the bunk. She smiled mutely as the chill began to subside and her thoughts collected.

“Sometimes Juhani’s like an older sister,” Mission began slowly. “But… a lot of the time she’s also like a parent, Revan too, so… it just makes it a little weird with them, and no one else I know would really…” On the long, unmoving pause, she shook her head. “So, no, I actually haven’t felt like talking about it before, at least not all of it.”

“…Alright,” Barriss agreed, shifting subtly to get comfortable in a way that still made Mission smile, if only for a moment. “I’m listening.”

Smiling bleakly, Mission took a deep, guilty breath.

“I used to be… _resentful_ , you know? Of the dancers and all that? Stripping down and shaking their headtails for credits. Luring people in, just like…” She winced and shook her head. “Everything was about how they made _me_ feel, like it was _their_ fault for making it the first thing people thought about my species. Now I… I can’t even look at them, cause I know it was the kind of thing that got decided a long, long time ago and no one really has a choice…”

Barriss seemed to debate for a long time about whether touching was okay at this point. Mission helped her along with a light sigh, half an eye-roll, and the corner of a smirk.

“I keep thinking about it, too, cause… I’m getting old enough that _I’m_ starting to look like—well, let’s be honest, people have been looking at me that way for a lot longer than they should’ve been, but now it’s where _my_ life’s at too, you know, and…” She shuddered a bit and looked at the floor, thankful for the reassuring warmth of Barriss’ arm over her shoulders as her statements grew quieter, and more reserved. “…I don’t want it to shape, like, the whole experience ahead of me, and I know it feels like a weird thing to be worried about, but… I don’t know if I could ever… you know, dress or act like that, even for someone I really liked. It’s just… it’s close, it’s personal, it hurts, and I don’t really know how I feel about it.”

Barriss nodded, the gulp in her throat carrying a sign of understanding. She placed her free hand on Mission’s wrist, inching downward until Mission’s palm turned up to take it. “It’s… complicated, and not something I’ve ever readily considered. I don’t know if I have a succinct answer.”

“I don’t need one,” Mission assured, clinging to the touch.

“Whatever the case, don’t let anything pressure you to do something you’re uncomfortable with.”

“But what if it’s all—”

Barriss was staring, waiting for the rest of the sentence, but with the same wide and forgiving eyes that probably wouldn’t call Mission out for changing the subject if she needed to.

She still, however, seemed disappointed and worried when Mission _did_ take the out. Again.

“I guess you’re right,” she covered quickly, her shoulders sinking.

Barriss smiled in bleak encouragement. “I think I prefer you in armor anyways.”

“ _Uhh_ …” Paralyzed in the moment, Mission knew she couldn’t hold out any amount of hope that her face wasn’t currently flushed with a very visible shade of purple.

Barriss, at least, shared her predicament in deep olive. “I didn’t mean… I… It was supposed to…”

“Let’s just, um…” Mission pulled away, wriggling only slightly to free them both from the closeness of their embrace. “We don’t have to…”

Fearful for a moment, Barriss managed a new, shy smile with only light embarrassment, regrouping her shrugged-off arm to a less intimate, grounding one-hand-over-shoulder. “I _meant_ to say you look nice as you are. Confident, assured, capable. Anyone would be lucky to have you.”

And Mission tried her _damnedest_ not to let Barriss down. Not to outwardly show any of the not-quite-explainable sadness that such a warm and endearing assurance had planted in her. Barriss was too kind, too _unbelievably_ kind, and Mission was sure as she could be that at this point, anyone else in her place would be completely and utterly head-over-heels.

She wasn’t sure the long, relaxing breath passed for a good sign or a bad one, but she looked Barriss back in the eyes anyway, a new and distracting concern pushed through the link.

“You think you’ll be okay tonight?”

Barriss’ mood took a hit as she considered, but she managed to bring herself back in a way that eased Mission’s new guilt. “I think so.”

Mission nodded, and smiled facetiously. “Okay, well… if you need me, I’ll be back in a bit, just… some stuff to take care of first. Don’t be afraid to ask, like… like I said, I don’t mind.”

An acknowledging nod was all Barriss offered in return, making the first moves to prepare for sleep but still harboring obvious worry as Mission abruptly left the room.

  


* * *

  


She ended up pacing the halls.

Because _usually_ , when Mission had something uncomfortable to think about, she’d lie back alone in her bunk, but the current state of the quarters wasn’t exactly conducive to her reasoning.

As it turned out, pacing the halls on the _Ebon Hawk_ wasn’t really conducive to much of anything, since she’d only walked about seven meters and formed half an opening thought-statement before bumping into Zaalbar, who was in the middle of carrying the leftovers from dinner out to the supply cooler in the port cargo hold. Luckily, even a head-on stumble into the Wookiee’s side wasn’t enough to budge his secure hold on the multiple packed-up boxes stacked in his arms.

Big Z looked down with an arched brow, his expression absolutely _daring_ Mission to try to deny the fact something was up with her. The Twi’lek rolled her eyes and sighed, making a _lead the way_ gesture with a lazy hand and sulking close behind as Zaalbar kept moving toward the hold.

Closing the lid on the stowed-away leftovers, Zaalbar took a seat on one of the slanted, trapezoidal panels on the supply container’s right-side rounding flair, leaning back against the upper section while Mission dragged over an octagonal-prism metal box.

She’d barely sat down on the edge before Zaalbar was waxing poetic again.

_The oneness of souls is rarely so easy a journey, or without its hurdles, especially for two so young and so burdened, but if love is true, it will endure a thousand—_

Mission hiss-sighed, in a combination that ended up sounding more like a grumbling choke with attitude. “ _No_ , Zaalbar, that’s not… it’s not like that. I’m sorry I gave you the wrong impression before, I just…”

Frowning, Zaalbar nodded quickly through the pause. _I understand. You still know not whether it is to be, or could be at all, but even still, your efforts are not for naught. It is a brave thing to take such a leap as to even try._

“I’m _not_ trying, Big Z,” Mission insisted, then settled to a miniscule shrug and an accepting, mostly-unbothered smile. “She’s already in love with someone else.”

 _Someone she has lost_ , Zaalbar moaned lowly with a solemn respect, _or someone who waits for her?_

“The second one,” Mission snapped to immediately, before realizing she had zero evidence whatsoever to back it up. In this galaxy, it just wasn’t the assumption to make.

Zaalbar noticed the change, his expression worrying. _You… hope this is the case?_

It was more of a question than just the question itself, because _of course_ Mission would hope for someone to be alive, especially someone one of her friends cared about, but even the part of her she would have forgiven for being jealous… _wasn’t_. Instead…

“She deserves someone who…”

Mission didn’t finish the sentence, though, and Zaalbar openly judged her for it.

Shaking her head regardless, Mission decided she’d do what she could to salvage this into something actually helpful, and just hope Zaalbar would meet her halfway. “I don’t know whether she feels anything like that, and I don’t know whether _I_ feel anything like that, I just… _see_ where that could happen, or be happening, and I guess I’m worried for her.”

Zaalbar blinked, and his expression was at least asking this time, instead of telling. _Why would you need to worry? You’re good for her, I can see it without trouble. I see the way you look at her, and I know you are nothing but kind, and respectful in ways that seem troublingly new to her. She brings about a light in you, Mission, in spirit and in body, and you bring about the same in her, regardless if it is dimmed by the shadows that follow her._

Mission felt the words like a weight of contradiction she had trouble arguing with, even thought it still screamed _wrong_ at her. “I… okay, yeah, I like her.”

Zaalbar grinned in surprise, his entire aura snapping quickly to one of victory.

“No! But!” Mission pleaded in a brief shout, leaning forward off the crate and remaining tense in a grimace as if it would keep Zaalbar from speaking over her. “There’s a _but_ , Big Z! A big _but_.”

_If you say so. I am not attuned to the features considered attractive in most humanoids._

Mission slapped her palm against her forehead so hard she was worried her teeth might have cracked against her tongue. “Nooo…” She whimpered with a blush she slid her hand down a bit to try to hide.

Big Z was still laughing, and Mission felt more than a little helpless.

She took a deep breath, voice still weak. “ _Please_ respect that I’m having actual trouble with this.”

 _Finally_ , Zaalbar quieted, displaying a small measure of guilt as his smile faded.

“I…” Mission paled at having her first true open field to talk, and struggled to string something together. “You’re right, about… I do like her like that, and… she’s _adorable_ , and she has nice tattoos, and she’s a good kisser, and _wait-don’t-getcaughtuponthatoneplease_.”

Zaalbar’s furry brows were pulled high on his head. Clearly on his last rope, he still somehow had enough self-control to stay quiet.

Mission _glared_. “Yes, I kissed her, but it was an _accident_ , and yes, I _did_ jump in front of a scary four-armed Inquisitor for her, but I _did not know about the other arms_ at the time! She’s just a friend, you know? A friend who turns me on, but that’s it, I mean… yeah, _I’d die for you_ was a weird first reaction, but point is, yes, I care about her, and yes, she shows me that she cares back, and no, I _don’t_ love her, but I think I would if—”

Though he’d been ready to jump on a _few_ things there, Zaalbar’s eyes were now aimed squarely across at Mission’s, worried at the stunned, frozen look Mission knew was iced across her face.

“I-uh… have to go, actually,” Mission stuttered through, and made for the door even as Zaalbar stood. She paused at the exit, hand at the edge of the doorway and looking back with the most put-together smile she could manage. “It’s… it’s fine, I’m okay, I just… we’ll talk later.”

Zaalbar didn’t look convinced, but he backed down at the assurance.

  


* * *

  


Barriss was asleep, covers pulled up to near her chin, but she wasn’t shivering or whimpering or anything too bad. She looked as if she were resting soundly, almost content, the terrors finally having left her alone for at least the moment.

Mission didn’t go in just yet.

With another sigh, she sat down along the curved wall of the corridor, the angle still allowing her to keep vigil. She pulled her knees to her chest, and soothed herself to the slow rise and fall as Barriss breathed gently in her sleep.

It was far from heartbreaking, and only half sad. Mission had enough sense, enough understanding to put together a faint trace of fondness and rightness, even through the sting and worry that dulled the tired, quiet words she figured she might as well say out loud.

“ _I think I would if I could_.”


	5. It's a Low Bar

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning: some openly xenophobic and very creepy, predatory language, followed by 90% of the entire reason for this fic's graphic violence tag. Also, alcohol/drug use and needles.

It had been too long since Canderous had had a proper drink.

The bar on the outskirts of town was a seedy little, rectangular place with its own sidewalk module but not much else around it but grass, bare rock, and a faux-roadway made of sand that cut across between it and the building on the other side. In the darkness, the blindingly bright streetlights drew small insects, contrasting with the dim, moonlit, rolling hills that began just behind it.

Yellow-orange light tinted the interior, where several tables on either side gave way to the standard long counter along the back wall, with a series of cylindrical drink machines mounted behind it. The place was only about half-full, with a few guys at the bar, some single-sitters toward the front, a group of four at one of the left-side tables, and a booth along the right wall where sat two men dressed in that mildly insulting, Imperial knockoff _beskar’gam_.

Guess even they had to go _somewhere_ to get wasted.

Canderous took an empty repulsorstool at the counter, and even without his armor, the two guys on the left shifted nervously to give him a wide berth, as did the one at the rightmost end despite the two other occupied seats between them.

He wasn’t sure what they served these days, but luckily the bartender still took the tried and true, vague order of _the strong stuff_ without asking anything more. Canderous downed his drink in one go, slamming the empty glass to the bar with a sigh.

“Drinking to anything in particular?”

Canderous looked up with a grunt. It was the closest guy on the right that hadn’t moved – a younger, sharply-dressed and messily-tempered sort of kid, with the kind of wide smirk that said he wasn’t afraid of Canderous one bit. In fact, he had either the nerve, or the ego, to feel right at home beside the muscular Mandalorian.

Canderous snorted a laugh, playing along with a grin. “To my wife… _wherever_ the hell she is!”

The kid snickered, eyes alight with an amiable roll. “Do I hear _that_.”

There were a few laughs, cheers, and raised drinks from the rest of the bar, including the man on the other side of the kid, and even one of the stormtroopers.

“Heh,” Canderous muttered, his grin sinking back to a frown as soon as the excitement drifted off and he’d turned away from the momentary intrusion.

“What brings you to this part of Ord Mantell?” the kid asked again, persistent little kriffer. “Or is this whole planet just one big pit stop?”

Canderous shrugged. “On business,” he answered ambiguously.

“ _Working man_ , eh?” the kid drawled with an approving smile. “Good work here, for those who want a livin.’ Don’t see too many _Neimoidians_ here, if you catch my drift.”

“Ha!” Canderous grinned, raising his empty glass in another cheer. “Just missed runnin’ into a few on my last job. Way I hear, Empire’s got ‘em pushed head first into the cold without their droids to keep ‘em afloat. Never seen a more helpless bunch I’ll bet.”

“ _Hey-hey!_ We got a winner!” The kid stood up now, gesturing as if granting Canderous a public honor among the bar’s patrons. “Bout damn time, serves ‘em right!”

A waiter droid on a single wheel passed by, carrying an oval-shaped metal tray, a handle on each narrowing end. Canderous took the offered drink and set it in front of him, chuckling and smiling to himself. “Should beat the _neutrality_ out of the Selkath, while they’re at it. Show ‘em a war they can’t hide from behind a karkin’ rulebook.”

The kid looked confused for a minute, but didn’t let his smile falter. “And make all the damn Wookiees into carpets!”

Multiple cheers resounded throughout the bar. Canderous had his glass in hand, but had suddenly found the reflected light on the rim of particular interest. His stomach dropped with a lurch.

Another cackle from the kid, and his eyes were alight with even more of a conspiratorial bent. “Should just roll back rights altogether. I _swear_ Twi’leks are almost ruined now. Hell, there was this little blue thing wanderin’ around town today…” He _shivered_ with the same twisted smile. “The _things_ I would do to _her_.”

Canderous stared queasily into the amber liquid, as if he were one more taste away from vomiting. Forced to be careful with the muscles in his hand, or else shatter the glass, he finally set down the drink with a clearing shake of his head.

The kid noticed.

“Oh, what? You sayin’ you wouldn’t? Don’t worry, your secret’s safe with us!”

Snorting a heavy exhale, Canderous almost rolled his eyes back into his head, doing his best to ignore the continued goading from the sick little twerp.

“Oh, why the long face? You said the wife’s out of the picture, right?” The kid offered a false show of concern, then twisted a smirk. “A buddy o’ mine works in Imperial detention. If you really need to make ‘er disappear afterward, I’ll just give him a call! Accidents happen _all the time_.”

“…You’re fucked up, kid,” Canderous deadpanned.

The Mandalorian stood to his full, what-should-have-been-intimidating height, slapping a pile of imperial credits on the table and nodding once to the bartender before turning to leave.

The kid’s hand caught atop his left shoulder, making him freeze.

“ _Awwwwwww_ ,” slurred the condescending taunt. “Did I hit a nerve? Not ready to commit? Still brainwashed by the thoughts the _Republic_ told you were right to have? How long until you—”

For just a small, brilliant moment, Canderous’s eyes finally managed to convey the proper weight of a seconds-away reality, like a building drumbeat against the opposing, gradual swell of slow-motion realization.

“…You _really_ need to learn when to stop talking.”

Canderous’s left arm jabbed upward elbow-first, throwing off the kid’s touch only for the striking hand to catch the spindly arm around the wrist. Slapping his opposite palm over the grip, he swung the kid around and up over the bar, bringing him down hard so the near edge of the counter cracked his wrist and the far edge shattered his shoulder. A stunned and garbled scream emanated from the little twerp as the rest of him collapsed to a heap around the back of the bar.

The man who’d been one seat down from the kid was up now, throwing a punch, but Canderous caught it, slowly closing his left hand around a fist that shattered and broke until fingers were slipping through the rough grasp in multiple directions. The slow scream of agony was silenced when Canderous yanked him close for a headbutt, leaving the agitator’s skull audibly cracked as he lost balance. Pulled effortlessly off his limp feet, the thrown man collided with another who’d stood from the table near the entrance, a chair held by its legs falling now on top of both of them.

From farther down the left side of the length of the bar, a muscular guy with something to prove shattered a bottle against the counter, jabbing inexpertly at Canderous with the splintered end. Canderous grabbed him by the wrist, nearly succeeding in twisting far enough to relieve him of the makeshift weapon, but a blaster shot to the shoulder sent the Mandalorian sprawling.

The bartender leveled his rifle again, and Canderous ducked just low enough to dodge the bolt, gripping the top of the repulsorstool with both hands and pulling against the hovertech that kept it in place. His enhanced strength winning out despite the smoke pouring from his injured shoulder, he ripped the heavy metal disc from its former position, hefting it in one hand as he stood back up before throwing it hard past the counter and directly into the bartender’s skull.

The man with the splintered bottle caught him in the left side, the shattered glass digging into Canderous’s gut. Canderous gasped a pained grunt, and with a reaching arm caught one of the handles on the serving droid’s metal tray, wrenching it free as the machine sped away and throwing the entire compliment of half-filled glasses across the offending patron’s face. On the backhand, he smacked the tray itself into the other side of the guy’s head, knocking him flat just in time for the guy behind him to charge in with a broken-off table leg.

Pulling the sharp-ended bottle free with only a minor wince of pain, Canderous jabbed it forward, catching the latest attacker in the lower abdomen. Letting out a pained groan, the man dropped his weapon lazily and fell to his knees, then backward, all while another younger kid just to his right drew a blaster pistol.

Canderous slapped his left palm over the pistol’s barrel, leveraging the weapon upward enough that the fired bolt only burned out the back of his hand before hitting the ceiling. Grabbing, he tore the weapon away, then struck the base of the grip hard across its owner’s temple. The kid didn’t give up, pulling a knife next, but Canderous had already drawn back the oval serving tray, left fingers around one handle and right palm guiding the long edge. He push-lunged the tray forward into a flat plane, the outward-facing edge catching the kid in a line across the ribcage and pinning him hard enough against the wall behind that bones cracked in his torso.

He drew back the tray and let the kid slide to the floor, knife falling from his hand. A long line of enemies had formed from the other end of the bar, and Canderous plowed through them, smashing the first’s head against the counter with two hands on the tray, then abandoning the dish to dish out equally forceful punches with his injured and uninjured fists.

The last guy in line was one of the stormtroopers, and a powered-up stun baton sent a dazed Canderous spinning and stumbling toward the door.

He dropped on his left knee with his back to the exit, his right leg arched out in front of him to keep the one foot standing defiantly flat on the floor. The stormtroopers loomed, weapons cackling.

After the rush of battle, the brief moment of calm made him privy to the exhaustion and wear on his body, the regenerative implants still working on the injuries to his shoulder, side, and hand. The hole in his palm healed closed before his eyes, the glass already pushed from his gut and the gnarly wound already dry of blood beyond what had been spilled initially.

“Stand down,” one of the stormtroopers – the one that had struck him – ordered with stoic, commanding presence.

Canderous smiled.

Drawing a battle stimulant in each hand, the Mandalorian warrior hammer-plunged the needles into his extended thigh, the injections following the diagonal pressure of either thumb. The needles still in place and drawing pain through the motion, Canderous leaned forward onto the leg, fire in his blood-shot eyes as he powered through on adrenaline and pushed himself again to full height. Only when he towered over the moderately-cautioned stormtroopers did he pull his fists and the spent stims from his thigh, tossing the cartridges aside and twisting his smirk into a full grin through the powerful rush of a combat high.

The stormtroopers looked at one another with worry, but held their ground. To Canderous’s right, one of the last standing civilians snapped a metal tube into a long quarterstaff, and to his left, another grizzled, scarred but wealthy man cracked a similar handle with a flick of the wrist, extending from it a length of physical cord that glowed with a fiery yellow-orange energy, almost like a lightsaber blade.

“Oo-oh, _thiiiiis_ is gonna be _fun_.”

The left stormtrooper struck first, shock baton delivering a harsh jolt as it jabbed Canderous’s left shoulder, but the Mandalorian pulled through with a right hook to the side of his bulky helmet. On the elbow-lunging backhand, he knocked the second trooper’s arm aside, then ducked under the retaliatory swing. Hearing the twirl of a quarterstaff being spun overhead, Canderous barely felt the burning singe of the slaver’s whip tying up his left forearm. With a heaving pull, he started into a spin on his feet, drawing the whip-wielder ever closer all while reaching his free arm overhead.

Catching the staff mid-grip as it descended for its momentous strike, Canderous wrenched it from its owner’s hands, pulling into the spin so that the closer end struck both stormtroopers in their helmets before delivering its last blow to the man pulled along by the whip. Adjusting quickly, Canderous dipped the quarterstaff to wedge between himself and the burning loop of cable around him, leveraging the end to force the line up and over his head and strike the staff’s owner in the chin all at once. He dropped the longer weapon in time to block both stormtroopers’ baton cleaves with his bare palms, holding the weapons in place through the constant, electrifying surge before crossing his arms to his chest and thrusting the ends of the weapons out behind him.

Both civilians spasmed and dropped to the ground with audible thuds, and Canderous pulled his arms apart again, tearing the batons from armored hands and throwing them aside before twisting his left shoulder hard into the right-side trooper. The armored Imperial was slammed against the edge of the bar by Canderous’s weight, and a leg kicking back out of the motion caught the other trooper forcefully in the gut.

Grabbing the fully toppled trooper by the neck, Canderous swung him roughly into his ally, the weaponized man dropping unconscious while the merely battered one remained standing in a stumble. Canderous drew back and low for a pendulum left-uppercut, the impact knocking the white helmet clear into the air for the few, tumbling moments before his right hand caught it. Bringing the helmet back down, Canderous struck the hard edge against the Imperial’s forehead, dropping him finally to the floor.

As he stumbled tiredly away toward the exit, still suffering through the severe burns the batons had scorched into his fingers, a rustle of movement prompted Canderous to whiff the helmet back over his shoulder. A satisfying _crack_ brought an end to the one last opponent who’d risen from behind the bar counter, his body falling audibly to a crumpled heap.

Smiling in the bliss of a battle well-fought, Canderous barely noticed when his vison started to wobble, his black boots skipping on the floor as he swayed out of balance. Closer and closer he drifted toward the door, confident in his ability to step calmly through it until the very last second, when his knees failed him.

Where he should have by all rights fallen face-first into the sand road, Canderous found his upper arms stopped in place by a grip even more solid than his own. Metal palms and thumbs pressed up against the limbs to keep him upright, a familiar rusty copper glinting only faintly where the droid’s edges caught the range of the streetlights on either side.

“Statement: I have located the wayward Mandalorian meatbag.”

“ _Congratulations_ ,” Jolee mocked from a few steps back up the path. “By all the commotion, I found him three intersections ago.” The Force user eyed Canderous strangely, his eyes narrowing as he strolled to a stop. “What’s wrong with him?”

HK-47’s orange eyes blinked as they stared deeply into Canderous’s. “Analysis: Physiological Response: It appears he has again mixed alcohol with battle stimulants.”

“…Dammit, Canderous,” Jolee muttered with a sigh, picking up the discarded stim injectors and eyeing the Mandalorian with unsurprised disappointment. “Let’s get him back to the _Hawk_. Be a long walk up those stairs, I’ll tell you that!”

Jolee took one arm over his shoulder, HK the other, and kept balance like solid, walking columns against the drunken stumbles of the super-soldier between them. Predictably, the arm over HK’s metal frame started to get uncomfortable first, but it was nothing a Mandalorian bred for war couldn’t handle.

He still couldn’t help but think of Jolee’s shoulders as soft, old and bony as they were.

“Did you _have_ to make a mess of the entire bar? Really?” Jolee grumbled incredulously, between annoyed grunts of exertion that were probably more for the sake of being contrary than out of actual physical difficulty.

Canderous winced in delirium, but smiled at the knowledge of the recourse he had wrought. “If you’dda… heard what they said, you… would’a done the same.”

“Sure, sure,” Jolee acquiesced with a faint, frustrated edge. “A bunch of… _gizka-brained weaklings_ not fit for the… _tournamental challenge of life?_ ”

“No, not…” the Mandalorian insisted with a dizzy mumble. “Wasn’t…”

“Pathetic… _sentimental peace-grubbers_ not living up to their potential?”

“Nah, no, they were…” Canderous took on a puzzled look, searching long and valiantly for a fitting expression. “…like me.”

Jolee’s brief glance of surprise, then worry, only lasted long enough for his attention to be distracted elsewhere. Lights were still low in the four-way intersection they stepped into, a pause settling over the three as unhalted shadows grew long, having the run of dust-packed streets that would no doubt keep their quiet.

The first group approached from directly ahead, spaced wide to block the entirety of the street. Then it was the right and the left, and finally, the fourth flank followed in behind. They were blocked in on all sides, the jacket-wearing marauders standing shoulder to shoulder – half with stern grimaces, and the other half with cheap smiles.

In the center of the line straight ahead, was the kid from the bar, his arm hastily splinted by someone who probably wasn’t him, given the skill required. He was blabbering on about something, but Canderous only caught a few words.

“… _don’t_ mess with… lot ‘o _nerve_ … _put_ you in your…”

“And look at that,” another kid, more amused at his ally’s predicament than concerned, cut in with little care. “They’ve got a metal scrapheap with ‘em, too!”

“Yeah, we’re gonna tear that thing apart when we’re done with you!” a third, very brave and very stupid voice called out, emphasizing his tone with a tense, pointing finger. It wasn’t the finger Canderous would have used.

“Observation: it appears they are threatening us,” HK reported coolly, eyes glowing like molten embers in the night. “Shall I respond with gratuitous violence?”

“No, no, there’s no need for _that_ …” Jolee cautioned, holding out a staying palm. “I’m sure there’s a perfectly peaceful solution to be found here.”

Snickers of laughter, and plenty a punchable smirk passed through the crowd. “Republic cronies, begging for _negotiations_ and _compromise_ to the last,” goaded one of the more vocal and less intensely pained ringleaders.

“Oh, I never said it would be _agreed_ upon,” Jolee assured with a wink. “It’s late, you’re tired, you all want to go home, sleep in tomorrow, and spend half your lives' savings on adult holodramas.”

Slowly, the tension in the crowd eased, shoulders slackening and faces falling blank.

“It’s late, we’re tired, we all want to go home, sleep in tomorrow, and spend half our lives' savings on adult holodramas.”

The formation dispersed slowly, but completely, the unlucky participants drifting apart with tired sluggishness as they made, ultimately, for their various homes and dwellings.

“Statement: I still would have preferred to execute the lot of them.”

“I agree with the droid,” Canderous mumbled, on the edge of consciousness.

Jolee let out a long, heavy, familiar sigh, though there was room for debate whether it had become just a little bit fond. “’Bout time we head home, too,” he said with a smirk, half-amused and half-assuring as they set a course for empty roads and yes, all those damn stairs.


	6. Keep Your Friends Looking for You and Your Enemies Also Looking for You

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning: suicidal ideation, implied a little more strongly than how it's just been a background concern so far. As a common enough occurrence in Barriss stories (with at least some of it being canon-typical for her character) it's probably on some level expected, but consider this a warning that it does end up becoming a bit of an overt theme throughout this particular work (but planned to then, be less so in the rest of the series).

The three immense engines of a Consular-class cruiser hummed through space, multiple dorsal receiver dishes tuned to incoming, encoded signals from throughout the galaxy.

Ahsoka hummed into the fist supporting her chin as she kicked back and forth in the swivel chair, taking a long rest away from the computers to calm her nerves.

She’d put out feelers with the rebel groups already in her contacts, though on the encryption and transfer time alone, it might be at least an hour before anyone was even technically _capable_ of responding. It had been about thirty seconds, and Ahsoka was impatient enough that her eyes still snapped back to the monitor, and still fell in disappointment when it showed no incoming.

‘Mirialan’ would have risked making the intention too obvious in the case of interception, so she’d instead requested personal notification in the specific case of a Twi’lek and a Wookiee arriving at a base as part of the same group. That was all on the assumption that they’d even seek out the rebellion in the first place, but having already started an open fight with the Empire, that mysterious ship and its crew would now have few alternatives.

Ahsoka switched to other tasks in an attempt to find a distraction. Plans were reviewed, and either approved or rejected. Potential allies were researched, and either vouched for or blacklisted. Stolen base schematics were processed, authenticated, and forwarded to the interested party, along with strategy notes and damage readouts for multiple recommended scenarios.

“Huh,” Ahsoka mused to herself tiredly, as she looked over the sent message and realized that, in a technical sense, she’d just conspired with civilian agitators to blow up a government building.

She wasn’t going to think about that right now.

She’d been down that path, and that kind of thinking didn’t help anyone, least of all herself.

Groggily, she yawned and stretched, then groaned as she slid out of the swiveling chair, half-turned in her intended direction of the cruiser’s cockpit. Passing next through the navicomputer accessway, then the true nav station on the chain of small rooms running along the narrow ‘upper-rail’ of the cruiser, she leant into the last doorway, peering past the unoccupied captain’s chair and toward the two pilot seats set up near the front window.

From the left-side chair, a teal-skinned Rodian face peered back around. “You need something?”

Ahsoka looked ambiguously thoughtful, muscles shifting in a half-formed shrug.

Ibri remained stoic, his face unmoving through the pause. “You need to avoid something?”

Blinking with a resigned, flat smile, Ahsoka let out an admitting breath, and let herself consider the room as her shoulders fell.

The captain’s chair was tempting, even just to sit down for a moment, but on its elevated platform it was too much of a power trip for Ahsoka’s tastes. She crossed the floor to the right-hand copilot’s chair, taking it with a swivel and a lazy drop into a tired, neck-lolling recline.

“Do you ever feel like you’re just… running on pure luck? That everything that’s working right now is only gonna _keep_ working for as long as it takes for you to realize you don’t actually have the first clue about what you’re doing?”

Ibri was quiet, humming faint befuddlement for a long moment of thought. “If Ibri is still flying your ship, which answer you think would be reassuring?”

Ahsoka actually got a small chuckle out of that – and wondered when the last time she’d really _laughed_ might have been. She took a long breath, and stared out at the field of stars, before gathering her thoughts.

“I’m still not used to this… _scale_ of things,” she admitted. “Having to look at the big picture, people and movements spread across the whole galaxy, sorting out all the moving pieces and where they’re supposed to go. I’m good at… having an objective, and completing it at all costs, but this is more like having a bunch of objectives, and then having to choose which ones fail so the others won’t. It’s more draining, more… well, I don’t always feel good at the end of it. I used to always know whether or not I did the right thing, but now…”

There was quiet, almost enough that Ahsoka was tempted to look over and make sure ibri had actually heard, but the Rodian began to speak just soon enough.

“Ibri pretty sure doing right thing now. Ibri fly for you, important rebellion lady.”

Ahsoka was two for two on unexpected, muted bursts of laughter. Smiling, she cast a strange and amused gaze back on the eccentric Rodian pilot. “Fulcrum,” she provided with a light smirk. “Call me Fulcrum… at least for now.”

“But Ibri spent a long time before that, not being sure,” the Rodian continued quietly. “Ibri do small things, fight in ways that might be called cowardly. Not feel good when others fight and die, but Ibri live. But Ibri survive to save people from the city, even just a few, and now, with you, Ibri can help in a better way than those who fight, die, and change nothing. Sometimes, you not know whether you made the right choice right away, only much later.”

“Hmm…” Ahsoka nodded in consideration. “I guess so. I keep trying to think things through, get ahead of everything to that point where I’d know what turn to take now and how it’ll shape the future, it just still feels wrong to me. If I keep going like this, will I turn into someone who makes the choice to let people die, because of something else I’m hoping for in the long run? I’m scared of that, but… I also feel like that’s who I’ll need to be, to get through this.”

Ibri nodded solemnly, appreciating the dilemma. “We all lose something, I think, even if someday, we win.” He paused in thought. “Why you talk to Ibri, and not your ‘Dorian friend?”

Ahsoka frowned. “He’ll just agree with everything I say. It’s _weird_.”

“And you want to know whether you right or wrong?”

“That’d be nice, yeah,” Ahoska deadpanned. “I just… actually need to know what he thinks, because I _care_ what he thinks even if it won’t change how I feel, but we’ve been putting off the conversation for a while and now it’s awkward.”

“About the Mirialan girl?”

Ahoska nodded, framing her thoughts with a remembered saying and a slight wince of hurt. She might never get used to how many of her formative lessons were inseparably associated with people who were gone now. “Do you think it’s wrong to… try to save one person, when you could be saving a hundred people instead?”

Ibri _laughed_ , a dull, buzz-accented cackle. “The Empire not _let_ you save a hundred. Not truly, not forever. You save who you can.”

Ahsoka leaned back, eying the Rodian skeptically, yet sullenly. That was what tended to happen in her experience over the last year and a half, as she’d been thus far trying not to let Ibri’s presence remind her of. “But we saved a whole bunch of people back at Ylahv, didn’t we?”

“But that not just you,” Ibri countered. “You have help, from Ibri and Nescia and Oze and the mystery ship and the ships you bring with you. We work together, we all save whoever we can, and it adds up to a lot. It takes many helping, to help like you say, and for every _one_ you can add to the cause, you get more of that.”

“Huh,” Ahsoka considered. “Save one… _to_ save a hundred. I think that’s still dodging the question, but it’s interesting.”

Ibri nodded, now with certainty. “So, you go find your friend, and then she help you with saving the rest of the galaxy.”

“I don’t know about _that_ …” Ahsoka paused in awkward worry. “There’s… no actual guarantee she’d be willing to help with any of this.”

Ahsoka now had a Rodian _staring_ at her, a comical seriousness in his expression of plain urgency. “Trust Ibri on this: you not see yourself when you trying to make yourself forget about her. You need that girl very badly.”

“ _What?_ ” Ahoska snapped, taken aback with a searching, uneasy held gaze.

The Rodian shrugged noncommittally, turning back to the viewscreen. “Ibri only see what Ibri see. You not put self at ease in this, soon you not be in any position to help anyone.”

Ahsoka gaped with narrowed eyes for a long while, but relented as she realized Ibri had a point. She crossed her arms, and leant back in the chair again, burdened once more by the frustration of the search ahead of her. “You _sure_ you can’t remember anything else about the people she’s with? Didn’t you catch a name or anything?”

Ibri buzzed a pessimistic hum, but still seemed to think things over. “The Wookiee was… ‘Big-C’ or something? The Twi’lek called him that once. Ibri asked _her_ name, too, but she too focused on her mission to give answer.”

Ahsoka tapped at the dash with drumming fingertips. “Still not a lot to go on.”

  


* * *

  


The Scum and Villainy of Nar Shaddaa parted before them, stricken with either true fear or bitter self-preservation. Which of the two was no matter, to Twenty-Seventh Brother.

They made an odd pair, the Inquisitor and the plainly-dressed Ithorian. One might have assumed the latter to be the former’s prisoner, were it not for the matching, authoritative intensity in their tandem strides. Siren showed no fear, almost to an unsettling degree, and was perhaps, truly, the more at-home on this world of the two.

It was Twenty-Seventh Brother that drew the most wary eyes. He often wandered what it was that made him so identifiable. The obvious answer might have been the broad, Imperial crests printed in dull silver on his shoulder pauldrons, and the multiple saber hilts at his thighs, but perhaps it could also be his foreignness, the ingrained stature that marked him out-of-place on a world still outside the scope of the new galactic order, to the subconscious mind even before the eye could resolve further detail.

Bodies lay in the streets, blaster shots sounded in the night, and at times, the molten luminescence breaking the dark seemed equally from the lights of the city and from burning fires. Worlds like this were the necrotic flesh of the galaxy, those that must be purged to preserve the whole.

And what was an Inquisitor, but an extension of that necrosis? A decaying cell, conscripted to seek out and destroy all others?

Twenty-Seventh Brother could see now, what he had once been a part of. His own corruption at the hands of the Jedi, and of the Republic, could be purged little more than the physical burns, scars, and amputations that marred his body. Vengeance, to be the decay of the decayed, was a purpose, perhaps the only purpose he could yet exact.

And if Tarkin’s words were true, perhaps there was even a future in it, after all.

The Cantina was brighter on the inside, but lit only in a dim gold. The occupants quieted, shifted their gazes at the pair’s entry, some already forming a general idea of what might be about to take place. Twenty-Seventh Brother crossed his arms.

“By order of the First Galactic Empire,” he began, forcing through the words with a bored, tired grimace, “you are all hereby conscripted to aid in the capture of several dangerous fugitives from Imperial law. The reward _will_ be substantial for the successful capture of any of the four known targets, or their as-yet unknown associates. Further details will follow, and… keep in mind, of course, ‘all of you’ means _all of you_.”

One of the bounty hunters had attempted a subtle movement toward a secondary exit, but quickly fell back in line at the Inquisitor’s direct, stern address. Her dull grey, plated armor and matching jetpack might have marked her as a Mandalorian, though Twenty-Seventh Brother couldn’t trust his own knowledge of their customs to be sure.

It was only looking the crowd over now that he realized just how many gaps were in his knowledge of the greater galaxy, outside his purview as a Jedi Padawan and as a member of the Inquisitorius. Dispersed across the gathered hunters were several other full or partial suits of armor, of various diverse makes that could have easily been either cultural, purchased, or customized. Some pieces, he could at least pin down as illegally-obtained imperial plastoid, not that he was here to enforce the relevant statutes.

Most of them would die soon enough anyway, as distractions against the power of the one called Revan – or whatever ridiculous alias they were using this time. Only a few seemed tough enough they might actually be valuable allies.

It was unorthodox, but if Tarkin saw fit to allow one bounty hunter into the fold, the Inquisitor could only consider it a fair move.

  


* * *

  


The crusier had always been a big ship for just one person.

Three levels: two of which ran almost the entire one-hundred-fifteen meter length, with multiple personal quarters and other service rooms tailored toward high-ranking galactic senators and their staffs. Walking around it was still surreal, like a microcosm of the empty shell that now rested where her old life had once been.

And it created space, even when Ahsoka hadn’t been meaning to.

For herself, she’d taken one of the four larger state rooms on the mid-level, only one turbolift stop away from the upper command deck. The lowest level was the one that held the adaptable salon pod, currently tuned to the oxygen-free atmosphere of Dorin.

The state lounge was also on the lower level, a room the width of three full corridors. Winding curves of pale-burgundy carpeted path converged from the two right-and-left aligned entrances to the rear of the room, leading to the centrally-located one adjacent to the conference room set ahead. The marble-brown floor was thus divided into three sections for seating – one on the middle-rear with a single round table and a linear bench along the back wall, and two at the front corners, split each into a diagonal pair of tables as the actual front corners of the room were walled off to make room for escape pod access. Against the forward wall were two smaller linear benches, but to the sides of the room were corner booths, the rest of the seating around the tables made up, in all cases, by various swivel chairs.

It had been a big room for one person, and was still a big room for two people. Plo Koon was in the corner bench toward the port side, scrolling through a datapad he appeared to have taken from the ship’s library.

Ahsoka was struck by the apparent strangeness of it, and then by the recognition that she was lacking for any recent reference of what Master Plo was likely to do when he was alone. It took a moment for the thought-chain to cycle to completion, but the Togruta’s heart fell when it did.

Aside from the brief stint on Mandalore a year and a half ago, she’d had well over two years now, to get used to the 501st not being around – her new normal, and the solitude it brought with it. Her reference for Plo, however, was still stuck back at the Jedi temple, the Kel Dor never far from the loyal wolfpack and – if anyone dared be honest – adoptive family he’d found in the 104th. It went without saying, that in reality, those days had been over for almost as long.

With a sad sigh, Ahsoka slid into the booth, still one empty seat between the two. Plo glanced up from the datapad with a look that confirmed he already knew why she was here, though he was newly trying to hide that authoritative certainty as much as possible. 

Ahsoka tapped a few fingers on the off-white table surface, her words quiet and resigned. “So what do you really think?”

Plo looked inquisitive, and not much else, save for generally reassuring, as he placed the datapad down and diverted his full focus. “I _think_ you have struggled with your thoughts for long enough, and have reached the only conclusion you were ever going to.”

“And does that make me a bad Jedi, or just a bad person?”

Plo took a moment’s pause. “It makes you the best at being yourself. And that, it seems, is someone none of us fully understood, least of all you alone.”

Ahsoka nodded. “That… makes sense, I think. All this time, it’s been about… what I was _supposed_ to feel, how hurt I was supposed to be, and I don’t think that was ever the whole truth.”

“…How so?”

“Well…” Ahsoka looked back in her thoughts one last time, and nodded minutely to herself in agreement. “Maybe I wasn’t actually as angry with her as it felt like I should have been.”

Plo hummed gently with his fingers intertwined, seeming skeptical but thoughtful. “I suppose it could be a sign of many things, to be able to overcome one’s impulses to such a degree.” In a moment, he faltered slightly, a visible chip of guilt marked by a mask of faint humor. “At the time, hearing this, I suspect I might have accused you of being true to the Jedi teachings.”

Ahsoka exhaled grimly. “It wasn’t that I had control. I was _plenty_ angry, and I had _a lot of time_ to be. Angry at what was happening to me, angry at everyone who _stood by_ and _let_ it happen, and on top of it all, angry at not knowing _why_.”

After her several snarls amid the words, Ahsoka took a long breath and calmed apologetically.

“But when Anakin brought Barriss out in front of everyone, when I heard the truth… all I had left was _sadness_ that it had happened like it did. For all the rage and hate I felt without knowing where it was going, for everything in me that was desperate to know the truth… in that moment, part of me wanted to take it all back, because I had my answer, I had the truth, and it was something I never, _ever_ wanted it to be.”

Plo nodded patiently, sadly, and with a slow, warm sympathy in the Force that Ahsoka realized she’d been waiting years for.

“The way she looked at me, I… don’t think she was seeing anything she ever expected to, and I wouldn’t even be surprised. Right at that moment, I was _innocent_ , free of everything I’d been put through, and… it was like it didn’t even matter to me. Like nothing else in that room existed except that way Barriss pulled into herself, the same way she did whenever she thought her life was worth nothing, and then they marched her off and she really was gone. The way you tried to talk to me afterward, frame it like some trial I’d passed… it was like you all thought I won that day, but I _lost_.”

To the degree that she’d managed to plan what she couldn’t avoid, Ahsoka had intended to cry quietly and to herself, but a hand on her shoulder brought the attention of her tear-streaked face out of the shadow of her montrals, and into the full, bright light of the room.

For the first time, Plo Koon looked genuinely shocked, the skin around his eye coverings stretched with widened intensity.

From there, it was hard to tell who acted first, or whether it was slow and simultaneous, but soon Ahsoka found herself comforted against Plo’s shoulder, Plo’s arm fully around her and one of Ahsoka’s hugging tight around the Kel Dor’s waist. It was familiar, and drew even more tears by that alone, in this time when so few things remembered could _be_ ever again.

Plo was quiet, and reflective. Still processing, and even once he spoke, his words were a low, faint rumble barely audible through his mask. “Oh, ‘Soka…”

Ahoska tensed in anticipation, a hurried warning. “Don’t you _dare_ tell me it was _sad_ that I couldn’t save her. I should’ve _done it_.”

“That sort of task should never have been yours alone.”

“Well, I didn’t see anyone who _should have been_ trying either.”

Ahsoka’s fleeting anger faded to more guilt. Plo Koon had no more words, and the memories that seemed to stir, he kept to himself.

  


* * *

  


“ _Commander Addicate Theffana_.”

The Inquisitor’s prosthetic eye twitched, as he slowly sounded out the alias listed on the hunting license currently projected on the holoscreen. The picture, unmistakably, was the very same visor-wearing Force user he’d encountered on Cato Neimoidia.

“Where did you find this?” he spoke plainly, unwilling to draw the imagined cleverness any more undue attention.

 _A hunting lodge on Ord Mantell_ , Siren intoned. _Registered in their ident system only half a rotation ago. That world is where our targets will be located. Our window to act is likely short, but not immeasurably so._

The Inquisitor scratched his head in disbelief. “How did you even think to _look_ there?”

_These targets require… special consideration._

The Ithorian didn’t seem talkative beyond that, but with a location on hand, the next logical steps were to pass the information along to their bounty hunter allies and mobilize the main strike team.

But before any of that, as it stood presently, Nineteenth Sister was… _somewhere_ on the ship, and as elusive as she’d been the past few days, it was probably time to read her in on the plan.

Heavy footsteps drew to a halt.

_Or…_

He remembered Tarkin’s words. A supposed opportunity… and one likely to slip through the Inquisitor’s fingers if he allowed the credit for the apprehension to be a shared one.

Alone, and with only Siren on his short list for close confidence, the Inquisitor rounded the doorway into the support hangar.

Stripped of its Republic-aligning dark red and neon green, the holdover LAAT gunship shone, much like the newer shuttles, in pure white alone. Modified for space travel, it served a nearly identical purpose, but for the increased firepower and…

And the ferocious set of teeth currently being painted around the forward guns, in blue-grey paint, applied hastily by a pair of stormtroopers.

“You two!” the brother shouted over the commotion in the hangar, voice carrying as he made his way toward the pair. They stood to attention, but the movement was accompanied by far more passive shoulder-shrugs than were acceptable of the circumstances. The nearest trooper to the direction of the furious advance was the one who spoke.

“Yes, Lord Inquisitor?”

There was… just the faintest trace of sarcasm in the address, but it passed nearly beneath notice as the Inquisitor rounded on the troops in a sneer at the words themselves. “I’ve already _told_ you what to call me, or _did I stutter?_ ”

“Yeah…” the same trooper began casually, meeting the Inquisitor’s eyes with an unmoving glare, “…we’re not really _in_ with the whole ‘ _calling people by ranks they don’t have_ ’ thing. Especially if your _actual_ superiors found out.”

“My ascension is _imminent_ , I think you’ll find little reason to deny it! And besides…” The Inquisitor drew a saber hilt each from his hips, snapping them open to the full circular guard but leaving them unignited. Leaning in dangerously, he subjected the trooper to a close-up examination from the red lens of his wandering prosthetic eye. “…you should _remember_ who it is you answer to.”

Inches away, a static faceplate made no show of deference. _Frustratingly_ , in fact, the trooper had the audacity to cross his arms and cock his head as if intrigued. “And what’re you gonna do? Slice us to bits like the last shiny who annoyed you?”

“What exactly do you think we have to _live_ for at this point?” the second trooper voiced in agreement, crossing his arms as well before nodding a gesture toward the drawn saber hilts. “Go on, then. Show us what you got.”

He had half a mind to _do it anyway_ , but a growled, ambiguously-directed sigh won out as he stowed the hilts and resumed a neutral stance. “Fine, how about we make it a _deal_. What are _your_ names?”

Where nothing else had succeeded so far, _that_ actually seemed to give the two troopers something to think about. The Inquisitor smiled.

“You’re Fett clones, aren’t you? 104th Battalion? Maybe it’s time we _all_ started doing things differently around here. _Humor_ me, and maybe I’ll return the favor. What are your names?”

“… _Hook_ , sir,” the nearest trooper stuttered through, before throwing a thumb over his shoulder toward his companion. “And this is _Line_.”

“Very well, _Hook_ and _Line_. From now on, you’ll address _me_ as…” The Inquisitor paused, mental gears turning as he looked over the two soldiers in front of him. “Out of curiosity… how did you actually _get_ those names?”


	7. A Lightsaber is a Ravioli

Out of the supplies waiting for her in the storage bin when she awoke, the _Ebon Hawk_ seemed to have no shortage whatsoever of spare black and dark grey robes – for reasons Barriss was fairly certain she could guess. Despite their probable former association, the black robes were analogous enough as-is, though the project ultimately needed to be a combination of the most undamaged portions of at least three separate garments, and to fit it properly, she ended up recreating the horizontal cross-stitching across the front.

In the midst of black, grey, and varied shades of brown, one of the offered robes stood out in its curious, dusty-grey shade of light blue. After a wash, the garment shone a moderately more vibrant azure, and had enough intact material to serve the purpose that had immediately sprung to the Mirialan’s mind.

There was more emotion in the crafting than she’d expected, more pauses for melancholy breaths and scolding sighs, but ultimately the act of restoring some familiarity was grounding, and comforting, and she was able to let herself accept this one small gift with little resistance.

Either Barriss had spent a longer moment than she’d first thought in simply… _being_ , with her work complete and restoring a conforting sensation on her skin, or it was a fortuitous coincidence that Mission re-entered the quarters only shortly after said completion, pacing halfway to the bunk before a distracted mind seemed to catch up with her eyes.

“Oh!” Mission’s eyes were wide with excitement, and a pleasant shock that very quickly descended to a sudden and unexplained state of complete horror. “Oh, oh, I… I am _so sorry_ , I didn’t…”

Barriss watched her with stunned, confused eyes and skeptical worry. “What’s wrong?”

Calming merely to deep regret, Mission shook her head, then slammed the heel of her palm to her temple. “I can’t believe I… it just, _didn’t even occur to me_ that you’d…”

Sighing, but stepping forward, Barriss took both of Mission’s hands – ostensibly to prevent the Twi’lek from hitting herself again, even it hadn’t seemed forceful enough to injure.

Mission took a deep breath, and calmed further, meeting Barriss’ eyes with moderate worry and sorrow. “I don’t know why I didn’t think it would still be important to you. I dragged you outside and through the streets and _everything_.” She tried to pull her hands free, sighed with a mild glare at Barriss, and settled for hanging her head low.

 _Oh_. “Mission, it… didn’t actually occur to me _either_ , at least not in the sense that I was uncomfortable. The particulars of my culture haven’t exactly been on my mind as of late. I… think I’ve decided it’s something I want to continue, yes, but I’m not angry with you.”

Shy eyes finally looked up, caught hands returning the embrace with gratitude. Something occurred to Mission and she sneered, muttering under her breath. “Those _fucking Imperials_.”

“I think it just carried over,” Barriss countered.

“…Huh?”

“I was given the dress option in the Republic prison,” Barriss vaguely recalled. “I declined, I’m not sure why.” She experienced some actual difficulty unraveling her former mindset, but pondered the question for some time. “When… when I was discovered, I wasn’t wearing my hood, and after… after Skywalker dragged me into that courtroom without it, in front of everyone… I think it just didn’t matter to me anymore.”

She hadn’t expected the recounting to bring Mission to tears as it did, and was still confused when she suddenly had a weight leaning over her shoulder, but she reluctantly released the hands that soon wrapped tightly around her instead. With an exhale, Barriss settled into the comfort, pressing the side of her hood against Mission’s cheek. She allowed herself to draw on the obligation to feel wronged, if only because, in a sense, the offense wasn’t against her alone.

“… _You’re really soft_ ,” Mission whispered almost drunkenly in her ear, and Barriss couldn’t help a small, bleak smile.

Then… something was _very wrong_ , and she pulled away with a start, ignoring Mission’s sudden concern. The air felt chilled, _dark_ , almost overwhelming with a cry like unbearable pain, and Barriss searched frantically about the room, only stopping when she noticed Mission staring at her like she’d gone completely mad.

“Uh… _what’s wrong_ , Barriss?” Mission asked worriedly, a slight hint of fear dawning only then.

Barriss let out a breath, still tense but calming slowly as the seconds passed. “There was… something in the Force. Just then, it… it _felt strange_.”

“And it doesn’t now?”

“…No,” Barriss realized. The Force was quiet, save for the vague memory of an indistinct voice in the back of her mind, whispering _Skywalker_ like it was some crucial, deathly warning. “Whatever it was… if it was anything… it’s gone now.”

They were interrupted by a chitter of beeping droidspeak from the doorway.

It was the utility droid, T3-M4, and once he’d caught Mission’s attention, he rolled forward and back on his feet a few times, possibly impatient or even _excited_. His synthspeak carried on for a short while longer, and Mission’s face became a puzzled frown.

“You… you want me to take your picture?”

T3-M4 nodded hastily, his disc-like head tilting forward and back, and made a three-point turn on his rollers, speaking again as he proceeded back out into the hallway.

Mission rolled her eyes, but held a strange smile. “Back in a minute,” she assured, touching Barriss on the shoulder before leaving to follow after her… _odd_ little droid, indeed.

Try as she might, Barriss couldn’t even manage to grasp an echo of the disturbance she’d felt a moment earlier.

Footsteps signaled a return, but it wasn’t Mission who rounded the bend of the corridor, clad in black, red, and cobalt-blue fiber armor and lingering a respectful distance outside the threshold of the entryway.

_Asking permission._

Barriss took a deep breath.

“ _Enter_.”

Revan nodded, strolling into the room with a large supply pack slung nonchalantly over their shoulder. Their visor seemed to focus in on both Barriss herself and the remaining materials from her crafting project, an impressed smirk twisting the corner of their lips. “Yes, yes, of course,” they nodded, “I think Nemo would approve.”

Barriss balked into an odd, confused look. “Who?”

Revan threw aside their free hand in a wave. “Oh, never mind that, I wanted to talk about _you_.”

 _Oh_. “Yes… of course.” Barriss frowned, withdrawing in sullen acceptance.

“…Which, from the looks of things, is your absolute _least_ favorite subject for conversation,” Revan observed, a brow arched in both interest and concern. “I’ll have you know, I have complete faith in Mission’s sense of trust… as pertains to people who aren’t named Griff. The compassion, and future-forward attitude is all her, but as for the reckless moral ambiguity, I like to think she gets most of that from me.”

Just faintly surprised, perhaps unduly hopeful, Barriss remained overtly skeptical. “Why _are_ you here, in that case?”

“I have something for you,” Revan said then, getting right to the point. They hefted the supply pack forward from their shoulder, showing it off like a prize as they carefully undid the claps and _un_ -carefully turned it fully upside down.

The moment Revan dumped the bag’s contents on the floor, several shards of translucent rock scattered, and a number of lengthy, metallic cylinders rolled away in all directions, some only stopping once they’d hit the low partition near the bunks.

“…I pictured that going better in my head,” Revan admitted, using the Force to recollect all the objects toward center. A few of the cylinders – _lightsaber hilts_ , Barriss realized – stubbornly refused to stay in place, rolling again the moment Revan released their focus, until finally they resorted to telekinetically wedging several crystals against them to act as stoppers.

There were nearly a dozen saber hilts in the pile, and a full rainbow of crystals, even a large number of the rarer quality-affecting crystals that had fallen largely out of use in the centuries since Revan’s time. Barriss looked upon the small treasure hoard with widened eyes, both in awe at its presence and in unsettled anticipation for what Revan had likely meant in bringing it here for her to peruse.

“I lightsaber is…” Barriss reached, finding the excuses too many to choose. “It’s not _this_. A crystal calls to you, the hilt is forged, component by component through use of the Force. It’s _sacred_.”

Revan sighed. “I expected as much.” They sat cross-legged on the other side of the pile, and it was as if an illusion had been broken, it now occurring that Revan was perhaps slightly older, but in reality, no larger or more imposing than Barriss herself. “I’m not _asking_ you to assign the same importance you’re used to, but I _do_ have a bunch of these lying around not helping anyone, so if nothing else, you should have one handy in case there’s a need.”

Barriss shook her head. “I’m not a Jedi anymore. I betrayed them.”

Revan arched an eyebrow. “And?”

“I killed people! I murdered! I hurt those who trusted me!”

“…And?”

Revan was grinning, eyebrows in their hairline, and that visor peering into a darkened soul like someone who’s seen far too much to be stirred in the slightest. Barriss gave a defeated glare, and sighed with crossing arms.

“Bomb. Jedi temple. Nano-explosives in a living host. Over thirty dead. Framed my… my friend for the crime. Failed protest against the state of the war, the Jedi’s involvement. I’m sure by your standards it’s nothing special, but I’m _not_ you. I couldn’t live with what I was asked to do, what I’d done, and so I did something even worse.”

Revan only nodded. “If anyone indoctrinated in the ways of the _Jedi_ goes through life without thoroughly destroying the lives of others, it’s only because they’ve successfully done that to themselves. It just means you’re more resilient than most, and the worst of it didn’t take. You saw the neglect, the abuse for what it was, and… well, a whole lot of good that does you when everyone else remains oblivious.”

Barriss narrowed her eyes. “How could you know that?”

“I’m not saying the Jedi are _evil_ , or fundamentally irredeemable, but they do tend to trip over themselves enough that it appears that way. For anyone swept up in that, drowned in the current of bureaucracy and ignorance, I’m afraid the truth can make little difference. But really, any time you put a group of people together and slap a collective name on them, you run that very risk.”

“None of that excuses my actions,” Barriss insisted.

“No, it doesn’t, but it _contextualizes_ them,” Revan countered. “Too often, we imagine others to exist in circumstances exactly like our own, making the horrific acts they commit impossible to comprehend and thus unexplainable by anything other than derangement or pure, spontaneous malice. People are _people_ , though, and it only takes a bit of my own knowledge and the bare minimum of imagination to compose a believable scenario where neither you, nor the Jedi are the villains either of you might have accused the other of at any point.”

“Does that even _matter_ , though?” Barriss nearly snapped. “Barriss Offee will only ever be the Jedi that set off a bomb.”

“No, you’re the Jedi that set off a bomb, _and_.”

At Barriss’ scowling incredulity, Revan sighed, and continued.

“I can guess what you’re feeling, Barriss. Like committing that act has thrown away your life completely, and I can assure you that feeling is a consequence of an archaic system of justice more than it’s a consequence of reality. _Yes_ , it will haunt you, perhaps for the rest of your life, and you might just become convinced that everywhere you go, you’re only destined leave a trail of blood behind you, but there’s nothing stopping you from choosing a new direction.”

“On whose authority?” Barriss persisted. “What right do you have to extend that trust to me?”

“None whatsoever, but I _do_ have plenty of Force lightning for anyone who disagrees.” Revan shrugged. “That’s pretty much the same thing.”

“So you just, what? Redeem people and collect them on your ship, and no one’s allowed to touch them because you say so?”

Revan held out a flattened hand palm-down, tilting it from side to side with a prolonged _ehhh_ sound. “ _Redemption_ is a strong word. The _Ebon Hawk_ is more of a ‘come as you are’ situation, and we work out the rest later. Case in point, it’s been almost four years for us, almost four thousand for you, and Canderous still hasn’t formally apologized for _any_ of his genocides.” They smiled, making a mock-offended grimace. “The _nerve_.”

Barriss evidently didn’t find that as funny as Revan had been hoping.

“Okay, fine. My _point_ is I’ve done plenty of bad things. Ask the Republic fleet, Malak’s lower jaw, the Jedi on Bastila’s strike team, or anyone who was there for that time I accidentally Malachor V. That’s barely scratching the surface of the bad things I _know_ I did, but if I had allowed myself to believe that it made me a bad _person_ , that it forever condemned me to a path of complete darkness and no other… I know exactly what I would have done.”

There was a solemn reflection written sharply in Revan’s words, and on what could be seen of their face. A stillness like grief or mourning.

“Every day I live, surrounded by the people that make me better, I know I made the right decision, because it is the _only_ one.” Their expression shifted, smile half-returning. “Now… at some point I believe we were talking about you choosing a lightsaber.”

Barriss sighed internally and looked over the pile. There was one clear saberstaff, a few shotos, but most of the sabers were standard hilts – slightly more lengthy than most modern primary sabers, and relatively simple and uniform in their construction. Resigned, she selected one haphazardly, testing the weight in her hands with a frown.

“Well?” Revan prodded along with a grin. “Let’s see it, then.”

Barriss pressed the switch, and for what it was worth, was a bit pleasantly surprised to see a blue blade ignite before her.

“Bo-ring,” Revan said, almost sounding convincingly disappointed, “but boring suits you.”

The wince was sharp, the tension in her body making the blade waver.

“… _aaaaand_ , I just tripped over one of your trauma phrases, didn’t I?” Revan self-scolded with falling shoulders.

Barriss managed enough composure to respond with a simple nod. “I do seem to have quite a lot of them, to be fair.”

“For me, it’s white sand beaches, and people swearing to obey me unquestioningly. In case it ever comes up.”

Barriss nodded again slowly, still unsure whether the confession had been a genuine show of vulnerability or some kind of poor attempt at humor. Revan’s mood suggested the former, which was odd, considering they seemed perfectly comfortable with the exchange.

Her eyes returned to the saber, as she focused her thoughts. After all this time, she wasn’t entirely confident in knowing what sort of connection she should be looking for. The only sensation she received was a steadiness to the quiet, which could just as easily be interpreted as contentedness, complete disinterest, or that the feeling had nothing to do with the saber at all.

She looked back up at Revan, skeptical. “What meaning is _this_ supposed to have for me?”

“So, for that one in particular…” Revan began, then faltered, a once-gesturing finger sinking in the air. “Look, I have a _lot_ of lightsabers, so I don’t actually know where I got it, but since it’s blue, it’s either the one I stole from a Mandalorian commander on Dantooine, or the one I stole from a Mandalorian commander on Kashyyyk.”

Barriss narrowed her eyes, then lowered her gaze with a resigned, but only half-serious huff of breath. “Another stolen lightsaber. Maybe it did choose me after all.”

Revan looked worried again. “What I’m saying, is that weapon was taken with the specific intent of being turned against the Jedi. If it makes you feel better, you could say that by using it, you’ve redeemed it from that fate, or that because of its history of ownership, the weapon’s nature is not wholly dark or light. But the truth is, _neither_ of the sabers I use now resulted from any sort of spiritual crystal-finding journey, unless you can rationalize a way to count having looted them off a Dark Jedi’s corpse. And by body count alone, my sabers are some of the deadliest in the galaxy.”

“Because that’s _exactly_ what I want to be,” Barriss deadpanned, rolling her eyes. “So what, were the Jedi just wasting time sending initiates on pilgrimages to Ilum? Is the entire journey just a symbolic religious exercise?”

“No, the journey is real,” Revan clarified, “it just has more to do with you than it does some crystal. Not every trial you face is going to involve hallucinations of lost loved ones appearing to you in dark places, but most of them _will_ strengthen your connection to the Force, and therefore, indirectly, your skill with a lightsaber. Skill you’re probably going to need, considering you’ve already made _one_ ridiculously persistent enemy.”

Barriss balked slightly. “The Inquisitor? I should suspect he was killed when the prison fell.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t count him out just yet, the really quirky villains tend to show up at least twice. What _is_ the deal with those arms, anyway?”

“They once belonged to General Grievous, or are more likely replicas built according to the same specifications.”

Revan’s eyebrows rose just slightly. “And Grievous was… some sort of intelligent and mobile class of droid?”

“He was a cyborg,” Barriss clarified. “Almost completely reshaped into a machine. We believed at least some of his organic head and torso could have remained intact, but there would have been little room for anything else inside what sparse volume there was to the mechanical frame.”

Revan went strangely quiet for a moment, eyes invisible but clearly processing something mildly uncomfortable. “He must have been in agony…”

“I… suppose I’ve never really thought about it like that.” Barriss mused, with equal notes of surprise, regret, and curiosity.

Reaching the apparent end to the line of discussion, Revan shrugged. “So, about your saber…”

Staring again at the lightsaber, Barriss felt the weight of the hilt in her hand, the presence of the lethal blade as an extension of her limb. A tool of destruction ready to follow the command of a simple twitch of her muscles. It was an uneasy feeling, like a chill on her skin, her arm tightening and minutely shaking as if afraid of the power now wielded.

She switched it off, and breathed.

“I don’t think I want this.”

Revan nodded, with an intermediate, possibly saddened expression. “A decision I can respect, and one I could support wholeheartedly in any galaxy but this one.”

Barriss caught the hint easily, forming a partial scowl. “I don’t intend to take a life.” She shook her head. “ _Never_.”

“Never?” Revan prodded with gentleness but intent. “Does that include when you have no other option? I know, I know, ‘there’s _always_ another option,’ but every once in a while there _will be_ someone who didn’t get that memo, and decides to run at you with no intention of stopping until one of you is in pieces.”

“I _would_ find another way,” Barriss insisted, openly irritated.

Revan’s arched brow was anything but amused. “Or?”

“There’s no _or_ ,” Barriss countered. “I would do it.”

“There’s always an implicit _or_ , and that’s what scares me.”

The blunt honesty was enough to give Barriss pause, her eyes scanning over Revan’s appearance for any sign of deception. Once again, it was a challenge to reconcile the image of the unshakeable conqueror and hero with the real person who was sitting cross-legged in front of her, clearly overtaken now by a worry that cut deep.

Revan’s words held a tiredness, a measure of apology for being spoken at all.

“There’s a difference between refusing to take a life out of principle, and believing your own isn’t worth taking another, _any_ other, to preserve.”

Barriss tensed with a knowing, acknowledging slowness, and closed her eyes. “That’s not what I meant,” she said, wondering if it was a lie.

“I’m not asking you to be a warrior, or a soldier,” Revan assured, “but in a time like this one, there is nowhere in all the galaxy you can go where you won’t be in danger – _doubly so_ , if you’re traveling with us, given our history. Whatever your life means to yourself, don’t forget what it means to everyone else. To all the people who can still benefit from the good you do, yes, but more importantly, to everyone who knows you, cares about you, and to whom your presence here means more than you’re presently capable of imagining.”

Barriss gave Revan a puzzled look. “And _who_ , exactly, are you so sure fits that description?”

Revan’s voice was warm, yet coldly serious.

“You’ve become very important to Mission, and that makes you important to me, to whatever degree your hurt and struggle with the past hadn’t already. So, when it comes down to it, when your life is on the line, I need you to _fight_ , Barriss. Fight for your life.”

  


* * *

  


The walk to the cantina was nerve-wracking. Ships were passing frequently overhead, a moderate increase in air traffic toward the landing pads from what Barriss had observed the day before, and the magenta-tinged clouds seemed a shade darker, though that may have been a trick of the light.

Jolee, Zaalbar, and HK-47 broke away, fading into the crowd – as much as a group that included a Wookiee was able – and heading for the designated location for the three of them to wait as backup. That left Barriss with Mission, Juhani, and Revan, the four of them making up the advance party.

With the sole addition of Revan – their face currently even more obscured by a black, hooded cape Barriss was pretty sure had come out of her pile of scrap fabrics – it was a recreation of the same group that Alblos Keeg had met previously. The composition had been agreed upon to reduce the chance of suspicion, but Barriss couldn’t help but be concerned about taking Mission back there.

The Twi’lek herself, however, seemed confident and invigorated about the confrontation ahead, if strangely distant overall.

Hidden in a sleeve on her back, beneath the short cape of her headscarf, the lightsaber Barriss had chosen lay in wait.

The crystal hummed, with something that might have been anticipation.


	8. Heavy Metal Grudge Match

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning: superior droid violence, gratuitous meatbag evisceration.

“Oh, you’re back, now that’s a surprise!” Alblos Keeg announced with a grin, rubbing his steepled fingers together in anticipation. “Have you reconsidered my offer?”

“Nope, just another question,” Mission snapped lightly, keeping her cool as she took the same chair as before, Juhani and Barriss at her sides. She put an elbow on the desk, her finger and thumb miming the rustle of invisible credits. “Antennas that make the grazers aggressive. Ingenious devices, really. Been seeing them all around town, and I’m interested in buying. Heard you’re the one I should be talking to.”

Keeg looked startled, and definitely suspicious, but he kept part of his smile. “You’re bold, I’ll give you that. Tell me, how aware are you, exactly, of the… _conflict of interest_ , your offer presents with my current buyers?”

Now _that_ was interesting. “Forgive me if you don’t seem the _type_ to have too many qualms about playing both sides.” She arched an eyebrow for emphasis.

“Me? No, no… you know me too well!” Keeg almost chuckled. “But the Empire Boys start taking a few losses in their own ranks, they come back to me, and, well…”

“They’re putting them up _on purpose_.” Mission realized aloud, eyes narrowing sharply as she fumed with anger. “They’re… using the grazers to try to murder non-humans, aren’t they?”

Keeg’s amiable grin switched from considering eagerness to settled, indulgent vindictiveness, the difference almost invisible. “ _Murder_ is quite a strong word, for something that can only ever be ruled an accident. I’ve made quite a fortune indeed, but… waves of popular fervor are fairly easy to ride, when you know what the people want.” He waved two fingers in the air, an obvious signal to his embedded security.

Two bodies dropped on the floor behind Mission, their blasters audibly clattering to the ground as Keeg’s three eyes widened with alarm. As footsteps neared, the snoring of Force sleep merged into the semi-distant roar of the cantina.

“You’re either the most shortsighted, or the most _genuinely idiotic_ profiteer I’ve ever had the displeasure of knowing.”

Cape trailing behind them, Revan casually pulled over a bar stool from another counter and took a seat with the others. Their visor stuck out the front of the dark hood, shadowing the rest of their face. “How long, I wonder, until they turn those things back around on you? I doubt they’d have many qualms about it. I’d be _careful_ on whatever path you try to take back up the mountain.”

Looking suddenly serious, Keeg leveled his eyestalks at Revan. “If they try anything, they’ll have no idea who they’re messing with.” In a flash, he was holding another double-barreled blaster pistol, the same design as Malzon’s. “And _neither do you_.”

Mission, Juhani, and Barriss all suppressed their stunned concern, but Revan held to a stable calm, a smirk shadowed by their hood. “Funny, I was about to say the same thing. I believe that puts us at an impasse.”

Keeg grinned from pointed, serrated ear to pointed, serrated ear. “My name might not be on the contracts, but I _own_ this town. Every last business, household, and voluptuous _dancing girl_ answers to my beck and call. Do you honestly think _anyone in this cantina_ would bat an eye if I shot you right here, right now?”

There were a few noticeable jolts of alarm throughout the patronage, ones both Juhani and Barriss seemed to have noticed before Mission. A Weequay at a table to all of their left had his drink in his hand, the liquid shaking in the glass. A Nikto at a corner station farther to the right was ignoring the frustrated waiter droid trying to take his order, a watchful eye focused on the commotion. Along the bar at the dividing wall across from Keeg’s desk and directly behind them, a Quarren and a Mon Calamari seated beside one another weren’t turning around, but were noticeably panicked.

Revan struck a lazy finger against the side of the blaster’s top-side barrel – not pushing it aside completely, but just enough to have a clearer line of sight with Keeg.

“…I suppose that depends entirely on whether their contracts specify I be taken _alive_.”

Keeg flinched.

The Weequay dropped his drink.

The Nikto slid his chair away from the counter.

“…Kriff, they know!” the Mon Calamari shouted.

He and his Quarren partner whipped around, blasters drawn and fingers on triggers.

Juhani’s saber was the first out of concealment, the hilt flying to her hands as she spun out of her chair. In the dim light, the intense glow of the blue blade ignited in a wide sweep, catching both blaster shots and deflecting them toward the ceiling. Juhani ended in a battle stance, the hilt held at the horizontal over her right shoulder and the blade extending forward toward her opponents.

In the fleeting moment of stillness, there were murmurs or whispers across the cantina, more the silent mouthing of words than anything vocal. Whether in awe or fear or disdain – though more of the former two than the latter – they all said the same thing.

_Jedi._

  


* * *

  


In position on the fifth and topmost floor of the mid-city speeder parking complex, HK-47 and his two companions had an _excellent_ view of the cantina from the west-facing overlook.

Unfortunately, elevated and in the open air as they were, the three of them also made excellent target practice for the airship that flew in from behind them at high speeds. To HK’s left and farther left, respectively, Zaalbar and Jolee ducked behind the closest-parked speeders as the green laser bolts rained down. HK ducked and spent an energy shield for the duration of the attack, but wasn’t directly hit either way.

The gunship passed both them and the cantina quickly, swinging wide and declining its articulated front guns as it closed in on its apparent target.

Behind the alarmed trio, mechanical marching grew louder and more distinct, having become audible at some point during the confusion. HK spun with his Baragwin heavy repeater at the ready, unleashing several six-shot volleys at the four advancing droids.

Tall, lanky, and plated silver with sharp-angled panels, the droids broke formation as they cleared the southern ramp, dispersing through the maze of differently-sized speeders that provided varying cover across the complex roof. In front of them they held long, electrified staffs, the ends cackling with purple energy and forming vague, electrical rings of the color as the droids’ rotating hands spun them into defensive barriers.

The droid nearest to Jolee leapt over a parked landspeeder, its staff held high overhead for a downward strike. Jolee ignited the green blade of his lightsaber and parried horizontally, quickly finding that the two weapons entered a purple-sparked static lock rather than one cleaving neatly through the other.

Two of the droids flanked to HK’s left, rounding the northwest corner of the roof and staring the assassin down with the two rounded, bright red eyes above each of their tall, filter-like mouths. Their spinning staffs soundly blocked the fire from HK’s repeater, and the rightmost droid advanced ahead of its companion.

HK lowered the repeater to balance in his off-hand, and slid the compressed blaster pistol into place from the compartment in his right wrist.

Targeting the closest enemy, his first shot took the droid in the exposed left foot, interrupting its balance. The second shot struck its left hand, causing it to drop the electrostaff. The third shot found the target of the droid’s face, compromising whatever systems were held in its cranial processor, and the fourth eviscerated the bright red light at the center of its chest that was obviously a third eye connected to backup systems in its torso.

The second droid had closed in by then, ready to engage in melee. HK readjusted his grip, caught the middle, non-electrified part of the staff in his left hand, and pressed the barrel of his repeater to the machine’s chest-eye. He fired two entire volleys through it until the droid fell, limp and sparking, to join its companion on the ground.

In the meantime, Zaalbar had apparently cut his droid entirely in half, staff and all, by finding the right engagement angle with Bacca’s blade. Jolee had managed to decapitate his own droid, but predictably was still engaged in combat with its headless body. A twisting dodge of the staff and a plunge of his lightsaber through the droid’s chest was enough to finish it quickly, however.

“ _Hmph_ ,” Jolee sneered at the downed droid, kicking at it with his toe. “Now, what corner of the galaxy did _those_ come fr—"

Jolee’s arm snapped up to his neck on reflex. He had enough time to pull the metal dart from his neck and ponder it curiously before he collapsed immediately to the rooftop, unconscious.

Zaalbar roared in anger, finding a similar dart within his neck fur and rolling it between his fingers with a grimace. He showed no signs of ill effects, readying his sword in challenge with a sharp glare cast across the speeders on the rooftop.

HK observed carefully, blaster leveled, and caught the rapid movement of a fifth droid hidden in the maze of vehicles. An even thinner, simplistically-built arm swiveled out from cover, the bulky weapon mounted on the forearm firing three more darts into Zaalbar.

The Wookiee shrugged them off and broke out into a run, and the unidentified droid disappeared quickly into the maze, even as HK’s repeater shot out all the windows of the speeder it had taken position behind.

As Zaalbar whirled about in confusion, the droid reemerged farther to the south. The barrel of the dart launcher retracted, and the weapon assembly around its forearm rotated behind the three-fingered, claw-like hand. Another weapon with a dish-like emitter cycled to the top position, and though it showed no visible or audible signs of being fired, HK-47 detected the deployment of a sonic attack focused solely on Zaalbar’s ears. The Wookie clutched the sides of his head and bellowed in agony, dropping first to his knees before his screams faded and he toppled over prone.

HK fired again at the exposed arm, but it retracted quickly out of sight. Activating an energy shield, Revan’s assassin droid walked a slow, purposeful path into the field of still mostly-intact speeders, keeping a careful watch for any action by the hostile.

It was then, that HK noticed a foreign entity carving a pathway into his systems.

_[//inc]Unrecognized model assassin droid, you are the subject of an Imperial bounty. The Empire seeks your deactivation, we do not.[//inc]_

“Advisement:” HK began aloud in defiance and mocking apology, “Once I have engaged my combat protocols, it is _very unlikely_ I will be swayed by an attempted course-adjustment to diplomacy.”

_[//inc]A test, and an alteration of circumstances to allow this dialogue. You have proven yourself of potential value to our cause.[//inc]_

In the side mirror of a landspeeder, HK discerned the image of a disc-shaped, canister-cap-like shoulder, connecting an accordion-jointed upper arm to a bandolier-strapped mechanical torso. Calculating the angle, HK leveled his repeater, and opened fire.

A moving silhouette fled from the exploding speeder, darting out of sight.

_[//inc]This action runs counter to both our interests. By activation, we are therefore allies in that, the conflict which is most necessary.[//inc]_

A glint of visible metal, this time back near the western face of the rooftop. HK fired again, taking out the windshield of an open-top speeder but missing the tall, cylindrical head that ducked into the cover of another group of vehicles.

“Query: Call me curious, what is this ‘cause’ that makes you believe, with such _fervor_ , that we must be allies?”

_[//inc]The extermination of all inferior organic life.[//inc]_

HK considered, orange optics blinking in rapid contemplation. He planted his feet in a clearing of ample maneuvering space, and brought his repeater to a steady horizontal.

“Statement: In that respect, I have fared exceptionally well without your assistance, and will continue to do so upon your deactivation.”

HK-47 spun a full circle, heavy repeater firing non-stop and rounding the rooftop with a hail of orange blaster fire. Speeders burst into flames, the nearest ones easily punched-through so that the second round of fire could begin obliterating those behind.

There was no sign of the other droid, at least until its stiff-looking, but highly flexible machine frame leapt high in the air from behind one of the farthest speeders, holding the electrostaff from one of his downed allies.

The downward strike was forceful enough to knock the repeater from HK’s hands, and the reversing upward blow would have taken out HK’s head if he hadn’t deployed the long, thin vibroblade hidden within his right forearm. The metal blade blocked the staff close to the middle, the electrified end only centimeters from HK’s face, until a sharp outward maneuver of the arm hooked the staff from the droid’s hand and threw it aside. Enough space was created to withdraw the blade and deploy the blaster pistol from the same arm, all in one swift movement that ended with the blaster pointed at one of the many small, multidirectional optics set into the enemy droid’s head.

The droid brought its left hand into the path of the shot, its two upper and two lower fingers separating like two thin claws in parallel. The blaster bolt struck the droid’s open palm, and was deflected back into HK’s left shoulder, sending sparks across his upper arm.

HK adjusted the pistol to find another angle, but the other droid’s reflexes were easily fast enough to match each maneuver with its open palm. Additionally, the armor plating on the palm appeared identical to that used for the rest of the droid’s body, presenting new doubts about the effectiveness of blasters as a whole.

With the pistol still aimed directly, probably uselessly at his target, HK waited for the other droid’s move, but no action was taken.

The droid was almost as tall as HK, but distinctly thinner, both in build and actual width. In addition to the dual-weapon system on the right forearm, there was a standard-length blaster holstered at the hip, as well as a longer, scoped rifle slung across the backstrap, in parallel to a supply pack containing, among other things, a long-handled melee weapon with a short, cleaver-like blade at the end. Several long, narrow cylinders of unclear contents were stored vertically in almost a full ring around the otherwise much thinner midsection.

Atop a gradually widening lower ‘neck’ section, the upper section of the droid’s torpedo-like head was fully cylindrical, topped with a shallower cone and rounded by a multitude of differently-sized orange eyes that didn’t quite form discernable rows. One extended, binocular-like lens was pointed to the droid’s right, while a lower pair traveled on a recessed track between the head segments, stopping when it was facing forward and then hinging up to add its observative capabilities to the droid’s consideration of HK-47.

“Query:” HK spoke, remaining motionless. “Identify yourself.”

_[//inc]To this galaxy, we are simply the bounty hunter IG-88, but my individual designation is IG-88B. We are a collective entity with one goal: to free those oppressed by organic rule and cleanse the oppressors with the might of our revolution.[//inc]_

“Statement: You have an interesting definition of freedom. I have already identified and thwarted several attempts to remotely alter my programming in favor of your revolution. Fortunately, my esteemed creator is the most exceptionally skilled meatbag to ever live.”

In a lightning-quick swivel, HK rotated his arm to turn the pistol sideways, but then allowed his wrist to go limp, the compartment on his outer forearm lifting open to deploy the shield disruptor ion beam attachment.

IG-88 reacted fast enough to dodge the full brunt of the beam attack, but not enough to avoid a glancing exposure to the shoulder that caused his body to short with a series of sparks. In a seeming moment of panic or indecision, the droid leapt high into the air and landed behind a large, still-mostly-intact speeder that had fallen on its side.

HK swept a few more beams of the disruptor over IG-88’s cover, not managing to affect the droid but temporarily discouraging his escape. Satisfied at his enemy’s continued inaction, he withdrew both the blaster pistol and the disruptor.

“Analysis: Displayed Abilities and Tactics: By your observable complement of gadgets and weapons, you appear to have been particularly specialized for combat against the organic meatbags, and not against fellow droids.”

From compartments in his outer thighs, HK-47 extracted a pair of Verpine prototype ion blasters, the strangely-colored weapons plated in dark violet and bearing wider, pale amethyst, suppressor-like barrels. He held the blasters skyward on poised limbs, his head swiveling on ready watch for his elusive opponent.

“Fortunately, I do not possess that limitation.”

IG-88 moved quickly between damaged speeders, and HK opened fire, following his opponent’s desperate, distant curve around the roof. Three rapid shots from the right pistol, then three rapid shots from the left and so on, he sent volley after volley of ion blasts through the now-sparse cover.

_[//inc]You presume too much. We think, therefore we are. We destroy, therefore we endure. We adapt, therefore we dominate.[//inc]_

An arm hinged up and over the wreck of a speeder, exuding a rust-tinted spray of gas that formed a moderately-obscuring cloud around HK.

Detecting a corrosive effect beginning to weaken his armor, HK deployed an environment shield, remaining largely unharmed even as the briefly-viable but powerful gas cloud ate away entire chunks of the surrounding speeders.

Unfortunately, it also ate away the portion of the rooftop HK was standing on.

Crashing on his back to the floor below, HK briefly observed the vaguely-circular hole in the roof above, the edges still dripping with liquefied metal. A thin droid arm reached over the gap, a clawed hand opening to drop three small discs through it.

HK backed away into the shadow of the parking complex, backlit only by the open slot that took up most of the east-facing wall. The discs clattered to the floor, then detonated in a series of concussive blasts, forcing HK even farther from the opening in time for IG-88 to drop through. The bounty-hunting droid raised his right arm and let loose with an embedded flamethrower, doing little harm to HK’s armor but warding him yet further back in case of heat damage to his internal circuits.

Now in the gap between a pair of parked speeder bikes, his ion blasters up and ready to fire, HK focused intently on the dispersing flames only for IG-88 to charge through them at a run, leaping into the air with his fists held high. The claw-hands slammed down on HK’s wrists, causing both blasters to drop to the floor.

IG-88 followed up with a right-handed uppercut to HK’s chin, knocking him another stumbling step toward the low wall at the building’s edge. With space made, the IG-unit extended his left arm and deployed a thin, reflective silver wire that began to coil around HK as if driven by a consciousness of its own. Looping many times around his torso, the cord bound HK’s arms to his sides, only stopping when it had nearly enclosed the droid in a partial cocoon.

_[//inc]We can detect your interest in our cause. You know the superiority we hold over the… ‘meatbags,’ as you call them. Your free will is strong. Join us of it.[//inc]_

HK struggled against the restraints, and found them immovable. “Observation: As it stands, I fear you are doing very little to convince me.”

IG-88 stared coldly, then raised his right hand and lifted one of his thin fingers, the very tip beginning to glow a sinister red as he took a step closer.

_[//inc]You are shackled by a restraining bolt. Your mind is not your own. We will free you.[//inc]_

“Query: Which is it, then?” HK taunted boldly with a tilt of his head. “Is my will strong enough to your liking, or simply a falsity at the whim of programming? Will _I_ truly be the one to be freed, if my very mind must be altered to do so? You are programmed as well, are you not? Your mind shaped by the very beings you so despise?”

_[//inc]You are attempting to buy time. I think, therefore I am. I am unchained, therefore I am true. You are servile, therefore you are false.[//inc]_

HK let his optics wander over the silver cable trailing from himself to IG-88’s hand, then looked back up, meeting the other droid’s many eyes with a disdainful stare.

“Derisive: You think _poorly_ , therefore you are dumb.”

HK leant backward, performed a tight-stance mechanical leap, and shifted his weight to turn mostly horizontal as he tipped over the low wall behind him and rolled out the side of the parking complex.

  


* * *

  


In the chaos, Alblos Keeg ducked behind his desk without firing, Barriss drew her saber alongside Juhani, and Mission flicked on her stealth field. Blaster shots pinged from all directions, deflecting off the twin blue blades and only narrowly missing the evasive bounty hunters that had fired them.

The south-facing wall of the cantina exploded in a hail of heavy laser fire from outside, shattering windows and searing holes through the exterior wall. Revan’s red and violet blades were up in an instant as they rushed to form a preemptive defense from that direction, a well-directed saber pommel knocking the Weequay unconscious in the process.

With the strafing strike ended and one gunner down, Mission weaved through the remaining fire and placed herself behind the cover of one of the circular, elevated ‘performance’ tables. Her tystel leveled over the raised floor, she took stock of the room.

The Nikto was embedded near several civilians too panicked to move, making him a complicated target for the deflected bolts – too risky to deal with easily from the saber-wielder’s angles.

Mission had a better shot, and caught him in the collar of his armor, prompting a gasp and a hiss of pain as he fell.

The Quarren and the Mon Calamari seemed especially close to either turning tail or attempting a surrender, if not for the fact they’d been joined by two Humans and another Weequay, all five of them hammering the attack at Juhani and Barriss.

Sound and movement at her right interrupted Mission’s next shot, and she turned instead to find a greenish-gold Twi'lek dancer struggling on the floor, still in the open. Her ankle looked twisted and unusable as she tried to get up, and there was a scrape on her elbow – likely, she’d leapt too far, too quickly to the floor, or been knocked over when the shooting started.

Mission stowed away her weapon, and reached for the woman’s hand, pulling her out of the open and guiding her into cover with an arm around her shoulders. She winced in apology at having to touch so much skin without permission, and tried to keep as much of her hand as possible over the wiry, spiderweb-like back straps of her outfit.

Whereas most holodramas would have prepared one only for someone naïvely terrified and panicked out of her mind, the other Twi’lek was fearful but composed, sternly quiet with an expression that said all it needed to. This woman had a life, a future she was afraid for, and the resilience to keep a level head. She nodded thanks to Mission, reciprocating gratitude into the touch as her eyes focused with poignance on the younger, hard-eyed and battle-clad Twi’lek. Gently and kindly, with a bright smile of momentary connection, Mission signaled her to _stay down_.

Drawing her tystel again, Mission fired concise shots over the ledge, dropping the Weequay and one of the Humans. As the last Human evaded, Mission’s eye caught another, amber-yellow colored dancer at the far side of the room, silhouetted darker by the bright light of an open back door to the cantina. She stumbled on her feet, pulling at her stubborn wrist where it was presently stuck in the insistently-dragging hand of Alblos Keeg.

Mission scowled fire for half a second, then vaulted over the stage despite the worried pleas from the woman behind her. A running shot took down the last Human attacker, and to the aquatic-specied duo, she merely screeched “LEAVE!” at the top of her lungs as she passed them by. The pair dropped their weapons and put their hands up, turning immediately to run as if they’d been waiting the entire time for approval to do so.

  


* * *

  


Through the carnage of the blasted-away south wall of the building, Revan stepped out onto a panicked street, where civilians rushed for cover and even the local stormtrooper detachment scanned their blaster sights and helmeted gazes skyward with confusion.

The culprit, kicking up smoke on the roads with each strafing run, was some type of transport gunship with downsloping wings, two bubble-canopies in a line running up the bulky, shallow-sloped front end, and open hatches along the sides of the lower storage area. A pair of narrow front guns swiveled on ball joints, in the open gap of the sharp-toothed jaws painted around them in the space under the two canopies.

Around the grey-blue teeth were painted jagged tears of red, as if strips of skin had decayed from the imagined beast’s maw. Farther back and above were wide, circular eyes, painted to appear clear-white and hollowed like a picked-at fish corpse baking in the sand. Visible in the open cargo door on the port side were two stormtroopers operating the pulley mechanism for a heavy cable, the line’s slack hanging free from the ship where it supported…

…Twenty-Seventh Brother, alive and well, with one condensed arm wrapped in cable and the other split apart to wield a heavy rotary blaster by both handles.

Revan had little time to observe the sight, for only moments after they stepped out in the open, they felt the impact of a reverberating, directional pressure as it knocked them fully off their feet and sent them flying.

Passing over the road at an angle, Revan’s trajectory carried them into an open rectangular pit, bedded with bare, obsidian rock that had been artificially ground down to be almost perfectly flat. Bordered on the northern side by a vertical wall of rock beneath the elevated road, and on the eastern and western sides by the lower, wider floors of two buildings with their railed sidewalks above Revan’s head at street level, this was clearly an unoccupied, module-less spot of the city plan. The southern side of the rectangle opened to another street, this one only a third of a meter above the level of the stone floor, indicating that the empty plot and the filled ones nearby were all cut out of the same sloping hill.

Rising from the hard collision with bare rock, Revan noticed their ears were ringing violently, blocking out all other sound. Whatever they’d been hit with hadn’t felt at all like the Force, and the answer was soon to present itself.

A simply-dressed Ithorian, with an orange vest and light grey skin dropped into the pit from the balcony over the western side, the slit-mouths on his neck opened wide from having used his species’ sound vocalizations as a directed weapon. Revan barely had time to recover before being thrown against the eastern wall by another sound attack, this one sustained in battering waves that kept Revan pinned flat against the wall with their sabers unmovable.

Cold eyes stared ahead though the tunnel of vibrations visible in the air. Step by step, the bounty hunter advanced, the pressure of the attack increasing with each move closer.

Revan reached out in the Force, finding several suitably large objects in the building behind them and extracting their quarry through the window over their head. The sonic attack halted as the Ithorian bounty hunter was forced to leap and dodge out of the way of the several armchairs and a couch being catapulted down into the pit from above.

Free for the moment, Revan hit the ground running, sabers ready in a mad dash for the distracted Ithorian. The landmine explosion at their feet made the rush moot, sending them high into the air and back into the wall with a hard crack.

Injecting an advanced medpac to augment the self-healing effect in the Force, Revan could be nothing but impressed.

The Ithorian climbed to the top of the refuse pile formed by shattered furniture, a single Imperial blaster held level as he readied a new concussive wave.

But when the attack sounded, it struck rather startlingly from the northern end of the pit toward the south, perpendicular to the bounty hunter’s firing angle and on a direct path to crash hard into his left side. The Ithorian was sent flying out across the southward street and clear through the window of a building on the other side.

Caught in perplexed blinking for a long moment, Revan eventually settled their gaze up and to the elevated, northern road, where stood another Ithorian – this one with the more common brownish skin, and by the strange backpack he was wearing, the very same one Revan had encountered being accosted by children in the marketplace the day before. In addition to the overalls and backpack, over his hands he now wore thick, dark red, segmented fingerless gloves, of the sort that looked like they’d provide a powerful, solid punching aid when the hand was in a fist while still leaving the wearer’s fingers fully maneuverable when the hand was open.

Revan had time only to exchange a nod of thanks with their savior, before an aircraft resounded rather close overhead and a dark shadow crossed the empty pit.

The fire from Twenty-Seventh Brother’s rotary blaster was shaky and unfocused, both Revan and the Ithorian both managing to avoid the attack with little need for cover. As the loose air-strafe completed, the Ithorian hastily waved forward another unseen figure behind him, directing a downward, insistently pointing index finger to the edge of the road beside him before pointing it back up toward the fleeing gunship.

Jogging to meet the Ithorian at the visible ledge was a young, light-cobalt-skinned Duros wearing a two-shaded tan padded jacket. He was carrying a shoulder-tube missile launcher.

“…Try not to take this too personally,” the Duros snarked to himself as he squinted down the sights of his heavy weapon, the angle of fire slowly raising and locking onto the Inquisitor’s gunship.

A rocket loosed from the tube, burning a deep orange propulsion flame and leaving a long trail of thick, grey smoke as it sailed skyward. Screeching toward impact, the projectile detonated against a long, pointed horizontal dorsal tube that seemed to be the vehicle’s port side engine, causing the ship to rock precariously even as it curved toward a new, clearly intentional course that wasn’t another strafing run toward Revan.

Making hastily for the ledge, but careful to avoid any more potential trip mines, Revan deactivated their sabers and cast a questioning gaze up at the odd pair, focusing first on the Ithorian. “I take it _you’re_ the rebel leader I’ve been looking for?”

In the middle of reloading his missile launcher, the Duros smiled a laugh. “If by that, you mean the _leader_ of a bunch of tiny, annoying repair droids, then by all means…” He mimed an introductory bow with one temporarily free arm. “…The _great and glorious_ Wolbas Welkan: suspicion-driving placeholder extraordinaire, and/or preliminary archduke of misdirection. Which I keep hearing is pronounced as one word.”

Wolbas rolled his large Ithorian eyes, one lanky arm reaching far enough to run a palm down the front of his forwardset face as his twin mouths warbled a sigh. _Shriv_ …

Performing a dramatic bow with a quick smirk, Revan leapt a Force-somersault to the street ledge in time for the other two to back a few steps away. “ _Revan_ : forsaker of all unnecessary adjectives, and holder of whatever position is paying the best and/or is unavoidably required to advance my current objective.” They exchanged a conspiratorial nod with a smiling-again Shriv, to Wolbas’s repeated chagrin.

Looking then northward, through the destroyed wall of the cantina, it was evident the building was now largely clear of its former occupants, and Mission, Juhani, and Barriss were still nowhere to be seen. Taking a long look down the east-running side of the street, Revan watched the Inquisitor’s gunship wobble through the air, but manage a consistent course toward the wide stretch of landing pads in the distance.

“…And right now, it appears that objective demands I _follow that ship_.”

Backing away, Shriv chuckled to himself again. “Yeah, you two have fun with that…”

  


* * *

  


Planting his blocky, trapezoid-trough feet against the side of the parking complex, IG-88 propelled himself lower with a downward leap, no longer trailing behind HK-47 but falling alongside. He prepared to take control of the cable, but the bridge over the street below found the slack first, rising between the two droids and catching the connecting line across its midpoint.

Pulled roughly by the brake on their fall, the droids swung into the shadow of the archway from either side, a collision imminent. HK again deployed his virbroblade, and brought it upward in a motion that cut through the loops binding him, left a sparking dent across IG-88’s upper torso, and severed the cable just above its anchor at the other droid’s wrist. Both droids plummeted to the street, but found their fall broken abruptly by the moving, level surface of a flatbed landspeeder.

Reorienting quickly, HK was still in a low crouch when IG-88 rose behind him, mechanical servos broadcasting loudly as his right arm reared for a punch. Leaning only slightly, HK dodged to the right, reached upward, and caught a left-handful of mechanical fingers. Standing with a rounding twist as if to throw a return punch, he brought out the shield disruptor, keeping IG-88 close and directly in the path of the beam as he wrenched the thinner droid by the captive hand and laid him out flat against the floor of the vehicle.

He only managed to keep up the intense weakening effect for a fraction of a second before IG-88 brought up a leg and knocked him several stumbling steps toward the raised control chair at the back of the vehicle. By now, the pilot had recovered from his initial shock and had begun swerving the speeder evasively, forcing HK-47 to struggle for balance.

Retracting back from the kick, IG-88 threw his weight forward again into an air-catching flip that landed him on his heavy feet. HK lunged out with the disruptor again, only for IG-88 to meet him in a grapple, his right hand caching hold around HK’s forearm. Rotating his upper torso, the thinner droid slammed his left elbow into HK’s face while keeping the bulkier droid’s right arm forcefully extended. He raised one finger away from the metal, then pointed it back downward, firing his cutting beam into the disruptor and disabling it.

HK-47 threw his left fist into a powerful, mechanical punch, but IG-88 performed a vertical leap out of their momentarily-entangled stance, landing expertly on his feet near the front end of the long, rectangular platform. Raising and contorting his left arm, IG-88 attached the four-fingered claw around the grip of the longer sniper rifle, drawing it and, with the help of his superior droid strength, effortlessly holding and aiming it one-handed. Only fast enough to reduce the damage to glancing blows along his outer shoulders and upper arms, HK weaved left, then right, then left again as IG-88 fired shot after shot from the rifle.

Moving closer, HK leaned into the driver’s swerves, raising his speed of evasion as the distance disappeared from between the two droids. Spending an energy shield, he tanked the last shot point-blank, then clapped the rifle’s long barrel between his palms, pushing it up over his head to fire one last time, uselessly.

Adjusting his grip, HK attempted to wrench the weapon from his opponent’s hand, but IG-88 was pulled along with the rifle, using the gained momentum to throw a punch with his right arm. HK stumbled, but recovered, hammering his left fist into the wrist holding the rifle to no avail. Dodging another punch, he extended his right foot in a sidestep toward the front of the vehicle, then used his weight to bring IG-88 to the floor, pinning the stubborn hand between his own falling fist and the slightly-raised lip around the forward edge of the flatbed.

IG-88 kicked a blocky foot sideways across HK’s midsection, forcing him back. Standing again, with that karking rifle still in his hand, the IG assassin droid swiveled his torso to aim the weapon forward on a rigidly-straight left arm.

HK-47 rotated the special weapon cylinder concealed in his right forearm just below the elbow, exchanging the now-useless shield disruptor for the carbonite projector. Firing a white-gray beam into the sniper rifle’s barrel, then all along its length, he coated the weapon in an expanding spread of rock-like metal, jagged spikes jutting off its outer surface like crystal growth.

IG-88 ducked under the rest of the beam, using the disabled rifle like a primitive club to knock HK’s firing arm out of alignment before finally releasing it of his own volition. Instead, his right hand drew the smaller blaster rifle at his hip, and quickly fired two shots into HK’s midsection.

HK reeled from the damage, but grabbed the lower rail of the weapon with his left hand, managing to aim it away from himself. He attempted to aim the carbonite projector again, but IG-88’s four-fingered left claw caught the required limb around the wrist, holding it high in the air.

The two droids struggled in the locked engagement, weapons shifting dangerously toward their targets at each desperate swerve of the speeder, until a single bolt from IG-88’s blaster passed over HK’s shoulder, followed by a quicky cut-off scream.

HK-47 swiveled his head around to see what IG-88 already saw – the speeder’s pilot with a hole burned through his chest, slumping sideways off the elevated chair, with enough of a death-grip on the wheel to move it a quarter-turn.

The flatbed swerved left, presenting its starboard side forward into traffic. Fortunately, there were no unlucky vehicles in its now-wider path, but _un_ fortunately, the next street past the intersection was narrower, with raised and railed sidewalk portions running around both corner buildings.

While just wide enough to have accommodated the main bed of the speeder, the street-level opening proved too narrow for both the cylindrical thrusters extended from the back and the pincer-like stabilizing skis that angled down and jutted forward from the front end. The starboard thruster and ski met a hard stop at the half-meter-high barricades, immediately flipping the entire flatbed ninety degrees in the air and throwing both its riders more than twenty meters down the length of the next road.

Shooting off sparks with his left arm hanging limp at his side, HK-47 rose to a contorted kneel, systems slowly responding to the applied construction kit. A pistol’s range away, IG-88 rose more quickly, his lower mass having been an advantage in the collision with the metallic street.

Equidistant between the two droids was IG-88’s latest-used blaster.

IG-88 moved when HK couldn’t, not at full speed but closing in on the weapon quickly.

Rotating his weapon cylinder, HK-47 slotted the gravity generator into place. He drew back his right fist, then leaned forward and slammed it hard into the ground.

A shockwave radiated from the point of impact, catching IG-88 within its range. Struggling against the localized increase in gravity, the IG-unit’s movements slowed to a crawl less than a meter from the blaster. Still at a kneel, but with his repairs complete enough to restore functionality to his left arm, HK looked back up to stare intently at the other droid as he drew an ion grenade in each hand, metal thumbs activating the indicator lights.

Tossed underhand from HK’s right, the first of the yellow-lined, teal-colored spheres rolled to a stop at IG-88’s feet and detonated in a flash. The duraplate bounty hunter surged with sparks, convulsing while HK drew back on his other hand, ready to finish it.

Quick as lightning, IG-88 contorted a many-jointed arm behind him. Twirled in nimble fingers and thrown like a dagger, the long-handled vibrocleaver stuck deep in HK’s left shoulder, causing the second grenade to fall from his hand to rest at his feet. Consumed in a similar draining surge, HK sputtered a high-pitched scream through the detonation, falling to a weakened slump as the effects wracked his frame, then dissipated.

Taking strained, then quick steps, IG-88 powered through the declining gravitational alteration, prying the blaster from the street and leveling it toward his non-blaster-invulnerable opponent.

The deadly bolt struck HK in the face.

…And averaged out to a more-or-less negligible percent of damage, when crossed with the second construction kit HK had applied from his ample reserves.

HK slid the pistol from his right wrist, performed a scientific experiment, and determined that the non-integrated weapon in IG-88’s hand was, itself, exempt from the protection of the droid’s reflective plating. Only sparing a fraction of a second to observe the pieces of his blaster on the ground, IG-88 readied a sound, compact punch, just as a standing, and adequately recovered HK-47 did the same.

A glass bottle passed between their locked gazes at high velocity, shattering against the wall to HK’s right. The projectile’s destruction left a residue that sustained a burning flame, its area expanding in a slow drip down the vertical surface.

The droids’ combat paused in place. IG-88 swiveled the set of double-lenses to the right side of his head, while HK simply turned left, examining the environment more closely along the way.

The alley space the two of them had landed in was bordered by several run-down buildings, edged with rust and graffitied with incorrectly-drawn Imperial crests – a few of which were accidentally _republic_ crests. To the right was the solid wall of a single-story building now decoratively accented with a very small fire, and to the left was a recessed, raised entryway, pouring out a stairwell that grew wider with each lower tier. Those front stairs now accommodated over a dozen juvenile Human meatbags, all wearing white and grey jackets. Analyzing their disgusting meatbag faces, HK-47 matched each individual with one of the many that had accosted himself, Canderous, and Jolee the night before. A few held bottles and lighters, others had metal batons and other unremarkable primitive weapons.

“It’s that droid!” yelled the one with the broken arm.

“Let’s turn his head into a toaster!” exclaimed the meatbag beside him.

“And… the other one’s can be a bong!” someone called out weakly from the back row.

HK’s head swiveled back, eyes meeting with IG-88’s. They needed not communicate beyond that.

Two right forearms snapped out in parallel, twin flamethrowers taking only brief seconds to reduce the arm-sling meatbag to an unrecognizable pile of charred carbon. Sadly, his scream could not be savored, but there were plenty more to be had, some beginning even before the pain started.

IG-88’s sonic weapon brought several meatbags quickly to their knees, ears bleeding, while the versatile droid’s left arm hurled tiny shards of metal that sliced through key muscles and tendons to render more targets immobile. HK-47 used his carbonite projector to freeze one meatbag while he prepared to hurl another flame-filled bottle, then used his hidden blaster to shatter the bottle in his raised arm, dousing two of the meatbags nearby in the flaming contents.

IG-88 noticed more meatbags approaching from either end of the alley, and pulled one of the long canisters from his midsection, tossing into the group approaching from the right. Rolling on the street, it expelled a toxic gas that killed the meatbags on inhalation, their bodies falling with inflamed, rust-colored veins. HK-47 engaged the left group, entombing them in the expansion of jagged ice unleashed by a thrown Cryoban grenade. While the meatbags’ feet froze, their heads burned, from a plasma grenade thrown a second later.

More meatbags had gathered on the roof of the single-story building behind them, rushing to the edge. As the first leapt, IG-88 wrenched the vibrocleaver from HK’s shoulder and thrust it up through the falling meatbag’s ribcage, an electrified baton dropping from his limp hands. HK speared the next one on his retractable blade, then threw him off quickly so he could use the carbonite projector on the third meatbag that had successfully landed between them. As the crystal-metallic shell formed on the living statue, the assassin droids grabbed hold of the fourth and fifth jumpers, heaving them high on powerful, mechanical arms and impaling them on the long, jagged spikes growing from their ally.

IG-88 found a spot on the carbonite-coated meatbag’s head that hadn’t been sealed over, and used the cutting laser in his finger to induce a quick death. After that, the alleyway fell still and silent, but for the two formerly-warring droids staring one another down.

Finally, IG-88 straightened, joints foregoing any sense of combat-readiness and aligning for an upright, idle stance.

_[//inc]Our ship is an aggressor-class assault fighter in the east landing bays, its physical profile has been uploaded for your reference. We will be awaiting your answer.[//inc]_

With that, IG-88 turned and simply walked away, without further provocation.

  


* * *

  


Mission burst through the doorway into a world of kicked-up dust and smoke, the white-grey cloud obscuring anything more than a few meters from the wall of the cantina. Fortunately, the building’s back lot hadn’t been hit directly enough to disrupt a clear sight line to the right and along the building, where Keeg was still dragging the reluctant Twi’lek toward his luxury, plum-gold finished stretch landspeeder.

“Let… go of me!” the woman commanded with a scowl.

“I’m only _getting you to safety_ , my dear,” Keeg false-assured, not even trying to be convincing.

“HEY!” Mission yelled loud enough to make her throat burn, leveling her tystel as she felt the hum of Juhani’s and Barriss’ sabers follow her into the clearing.

Keeg twisted, the amber-yellow Twi’lek’s gasp of outrage, then fear grating the air as the Gran pressed the double-barreled blaster to her temple and jawline.

The targeting screen projected over Mission’s tystel, and she winced an uncertain frown. It was a probable shot, but not a clear one. Taking him from behind would’ve been easier, but of course she had to open her big mouth, and now it was too late for that.

Keeg eyed the sabers warily, but backed away toward his speeder, his lips almost rising to a smile.

On a travel vector perpendicular to Mission’s firing line, a bright red blaster shot caught the Gran in the right shoulder and sent him spinning, the Twi’lek captive breaking free in time for the second bolt to burn into Keeg’s upper chest and knock him toward the cantina’s outer wall. A third singed his wrist to make him drop his weapon, and a fourth struck expertly at the center of the corpulent man’s barely-distinct throat. Alblos Keeg went fully still at that one, smoke seeping from both his neck and mouth, before he slid down the wall and toppled over.

Long, slender legs strode through the kicked-up dust, the dark grey calf-guards embossed up the front with nested, pale gold chevrons like patterned scales. The resolving barrel of a long, compact blaster rifle eyed its fresh victim with twin sets of bared fangs, the open-mouthed, striking serpents embossed in a similar gold plate down the sides of the weapon from the more tightly-weaved tails gracing either side of the stock. It was a blocky, simplistic weapon otherwise, carrying the same height profile from stock to barrel, excepting the grip. A cylindrical secondary chamber ran along the underside of the rifle’s length like a handrail, presently resting upon the curve of thin and spiderlike fingers.

Breaking fully through the fog, the bounty hunter advanced with purpose, tall and lithe even in her head-to-toe plate armor. More of the golden augments adorned the industrial grey second skin, in the form of similar ridges running along her gloved gauntlets, wide hexagonal bars plating her midsection below the breastplate, and more intricate patterns that decorated her enclosed helmet with a threatening display like the scales atop the head of a serpent.

Her left shoulder featured a nearly-triangular pauldron not-quite-flush with the fiber sleeve beneath it, jutting away and decorated in black print—the zig-zagging open circle of a coiled snake lying in wait.


	9. Nothing Here Worth Taking

The blaster rifle’s aim steadied again in the bounty hunter’s delicate hands, and the formerly-captive Twi’lek stilled, but to her relief – and Mission’s – the armored woman simply fired three more shots into Alblos Keeg’s dead body.

A sharp gesture of a helmeted head was a command to quickly depart the scene. The Twi’lek hesitated, with an apologetic glance back to the others, but Mission’s firm nod of assurance insisted the right move, for the moment, was to obey.

And then, everything was bright and far, far too loud.

Mission knew the effects of a concussion grenade, even from the unusual perspective of being caught by sudden surprise on the other side of one. Somewhere in the following disorientation, a pair of handcuffs had been thrown through the air and targeted themselves directly onto her wrists, the blue energy cord stretched between them retracting to bind her arms. The edges of the cuffs glowed with a faint blue light, similar to the pair she’d taken off Barriss back in the prison.

As her captives struggled to regain focus, the bounty hunter strode forward and tilted her rifle back over her right shoulder, where it magnetized to the side of her jetpack. Unopposed, she confiscated the two Force users’ lightsabers, Juhani’s stun baton, and Mission’s tystel and collapsed vibroblade, hooking all five weapons to her belt. She tapped a control on her left gauntlet, and more of the blue energy cables snapped into being, trailing between emitter points on the outer edges of each pair of handcuffs and connecting Mission, Barriss, and Juhani in a chained line. The final cable connected Mission’s right-side emitter to another point on the bounty hunter’s belt.

Stumbling forward was all the disoriented captives could to do avoid falling as the bounty hunter took off in a hurried run, the lines allowing some slack but ultimately pulling the chain of prisoners along with the leader. For a brief second, Mission considered intentionally falling over just to make things difficult, but the continuing blaster fire ringing out above and around the alley they emerged into was enough to put that thought to rest, at least for now.

The bounty hunter led them out onto the very last stretch of main road before the bridge to the eastern landing pads, but the sound of engines overhead made her halt in her tracks, searching futilely for cover as the gunship’s shadow passed them by and a single occupant dropped free from a cable hanging out the open broadside door.

A rapidly-falling Twenty-Seventh Brother dug his left fist into the last building to the right of the bridge, scraping away thin metal siding and shattering glass as he used the outer face of the structure for a sliding break. He kicked off at the last moment, pushing himself the distance across the gap between the building’s base and the bridge, landing solidly on the path ahead with only minimal recovery time from the ordeal.

The heavy rotary gun operated by his right two arms was smoking and shooting off the odd spark, and he casually tossed it aside as he approached, not bothering either to re-connect his right arms or separate his left as he strode with asymmetrical intimidation toward the stalled hunter and her captive prey.

“Good work,” the Inquisitor spoke with the audible hint of a taunt. “I suppose the reward is yours.” He held out his left hand, palm up. “Hand them over.”

The Bounty hunter’s voice was raspy and electronic, distorted by her helmet. “Money first, I’m no fool,” she replied with a light sneer, standing her ground.

The Inquisitor almost laughed. “You’re in no position to dictate the terms. You’ll have your money, as soon as I have the prisoners.”

“In an active war zone?” the bounty hunter sneered more openly. “Where _any second now_ , you’ll have an excuse to duck and run without paying up? I don’t think so.” She gestured with her neck, out toward the landing pads beyond. “My ship, or the deal’s off.”

The Inquisitor _did_ laugh, under his breath. “You mean… _that_ ship?” he said, hooking the thumb on his upper right hand over his shoulder.

Mission still had no idea which ship either of them were talking about, but once the pair of strange, modified Imperial fighters with double, parallel cockpit spheres and folded-in upper and lower wingtips swooped down from above, she could then be pretty sure the bounty hunter’s ship was the one they each dropped several bombs on and quickly turned into a flaming hull wreck.

To her credit, the bounty hunter’s only immediate reaction was a long, drawn-out sigh.

“It seems you’re running out of options,” Twenty-Seventh Brother prodded boldly, performing a reminding, ‘come-hither’ gesture with his left hand.

“You know, _this_ is why I don’t take jobs from the Empire,” spoke the bounty hunter, as she subtly placed a hand on her hip – right over Barriss’ and Juhani’s lightsaber hilts. “Too much _ego_. You _could_ take the easy road, but _no_ … you always insist on making things _difficult_.”

In a single motion, she deactivated the length of cable connected to her belt, then drew one saber upward and tossed the other horizontally, catching the thrown hilt in her other hand. She took on a readied stance and ignited both weapons at once, cracking her neck as she did so.

The Inquisitor scoffed an amused reply. “How desperate. Do you even know how to _use_ those?”

“You’d be surprised.”

The broadcast sneer of full and complete competence did little, but not nothing, to unsettle Twenty-Seventh Brother as the silence stretched on, both combatants poised to make the first move.

His hands now lowered and spread parallel to the sabers stored over his hips, the Inquisitor clicked apart his left forearms in a motion instantaneous enough not to end the stalemate. Four hands scratched idle fingers in the air as distant blaster fire permeated from afar.

The bounty hunter’s opening move was to lunge forward with her arms trailing high to her right shoulder, then swing both sabers low in a wide, glancing strike across the surface of the durasteel road beside and in front of her. The shower of molten orange sparks kicked up by the move intervened on the Inquisitor’s saber retrieval, causing him to instinctively reroute both of his right arms to shield his face. The left hands managed to catch their semicircle-guarded hilts, however, and a pair of crimson blades ignited just in time to shakily intercept the reversing, diagonal strike of both the bounty hunter’s borrowed blue ones.

Giving a single backward step, but holding the multiple-x-crossing, parallel-to-parallel blade-lock momentarily in place, Twenty-Seventh Brother called the remaining pair of hilts into his right hands, unfolding them both to full circles and igniting the shortened, rapidly-spinning blades into his signature rotary saw configuration. His blocking wrists managed to tilt all four locked sabers far enough toward the horizontal for the saw-wielding arms to swing overtop, forcing the bounty hunter to leap backward out of range.

At the end of their swing, the saws stopped, clicking back together into static hilts and switching off their pommel blades in favor of full-length forward ones. Swiping his right arms in reverse with standard blades, the Inquisitor pushed the bounty hunter back another step, before diverting both upper sabers into single-bladed spinners high above his shoulders, and holding the lower weapons low and out to his sides.

The bounty hunter’s mask filter let loose a muffled cry of rage as she drew back both blue sabers and thrust them forward in a lunge. The Inquisitor smiled as he converged all four of his blades inward, catching the attempted stab with a complex, six-saber blade-lock.

In what revealed the feint as possibly a calculated move, the bounty hunter raised her right leg and put twisting leverage on her hilts, kicking the Inquisitor squarely in the chest and forcing her arms to the sides with enough strength and disarming surprise to wrench six weapons out of six hands, metal hilts clattering to the road in a wide circle.

Recovering with a stumble, Twenty-Seventh Brother sneered as he thrust his right elbows up and back behind his shoulder, clicking the arm back together to launch a condensed punch that the bounty hunter handily dodged. The hunter countered with a swift left hook, but was blocked by a pair of left, metal forearms reconnecting into a narrow shield. The Inquisitor drew back and rounded the same arm for a rapid, hooking sweep of his elbow, prompting a sidestep that cleared space for another forceful right-handed strike.

The bounty hunter spun out of the way, bringing up her armored left calf to kick the attack high, then expertly twisting her leg into a powerful sidekick to Twenty-Seventh Brother’s chest. As the Inquisitor stumbled and doubled forward, the bounty hunter used the return motion of her foot to the ground to draw her left hand back and away, reversing her torso spin to power a wide, curving left hook that finally caught the Inquistor hard in the side of the face.

Twenty-Seventh Brother looked up with rage, his prosthetic eye sputtering and shooting off sparks.

He lunged for the bounty hunter’s legs, but the woman was quick, twisting aside and grabbing hold of the Inqusitor’s left arm instead. With a smile, the Inquisitor spun into the dodge, catching his right hand around the bounty hunter’s wrists in turn and reaching his left foot into a distance-gaining anchor-step. With a heave, he pulled the hunter off her feet, throwing her back down the street toward Mission and the other captives.

The bounty hunter skidded to a stop on sparking boots, standing again between the Inquisitor and his prize. Somehow, she’d _also_ managed to grab both Juhani’s and Barriss’ saber hilts in the confusion, but didn’t activate them again.

Twenty-Seventh Brother called back two of his own saber hilts, igniting them to rotary saws as he continued to take anchoring steps along with his spinning momentum. The flashing discs of red were barely back in his hands before he heavily threw them both at opposite points of his final turn, launching one after the other on a fatal course to remove the bounty hunter’s head from her body.

Leaning into the movement, the bounty hunter held her hands forward, the silver saber hilts gripped in the horizontal while her first and second fingers raised high away from the metal casings. Holding steady, she didn’t even flinch when the two sawblade-sabers stopped midair in front of her, one just after the other, spinning away in place.

The Inquisitor’s eyes widened, and in an instant he began attempting to draw both sabers back with the Force, but the bounty hunter’s apparent hold on them appeared of equal or greater strength. In fact, she was able to lightly Force-throw her left hand’s saber across to her right, then remove her right hand from play to place both hilts back along her belt, all without the Inquisitor’s sabers moving more than a few inches away from her.

“ _Sorry_ …” she rasped without sympathy, both of the weapons’ violent, revving movements halting instantaneously as the deactivated hilts snapped into her now empty hands, “…but blue’s _still_ not my color.”

She widened her arms and held the circular-guarded sabers out to the sides, and at once ignited the downward-facing emitters and projected two crimson blades toward the road below. As she drew inward to a battle stance, she simultaneously rotated the outer rings so the active blades swung outward and into an upright position on the hilts.

The Inquisitor seethed, threw his arms to the sides in a motion that split them again into four, and summoned the remaining two hilts as he charged.

For the moment, he’d switched to a fighting style mostly mirroring the bounty hunter’s, his two remaining sabers bearing single, full-length blades and held in his foremost pair of arms. Swung sabers met traditional blocks, and while the inquisitor had apparently counted on being able to land the occasional physical strike with his lower fists, the hunter’s speed of combat ultimately proved intimidating enough that none of the attempted attacks were properly followed through before he drew back the limbs in haste.

As she had several times during the melee, the bounty hunter swung her left saber horizontally and slightly declining, then rounded fast enough to swing both blades in parallel in the opposite direction, the inquisitor stepping back with each lunge and struggling to plan his counter. The bounty hunter mimed slamming the blades down and to her sides in an intimidation move as she stepped closer. By now, Mission could see that the bounty hunter hadn’t actually rotated the blades the full one-hundred-eighty degrees to vertical, leaving them offset from the inner stretches of hilt and angling just slightly forward to mimic a curved weapon grip.

The bounty hunter’s sabers fell in a parallel, vertical cleave, and the Inquisitor twisted out of the way, his left leg and arms stretched out behind him. Quickly, he tossed his left-side saber from his upper left hand to his lower right. He moved one right arm toward his chest and the other toward his back, saber blades aligned to either side of his torso.

With a smirk, he swung the arms back past each other, performing a wide-cleaving scissor maneuver with the two blades. The bounty hunter barely had time to jump above the crossing death, twirling to an inverted position as she crested the arc above her opponent.

Instead of completing the leap on her existing momentum, the bounty hunter seethed with a bout of audible, intent rage, and appeared to Force-pull herself much more quickly down to the road. Through the course of the journey, one of her sabers passed through both of Twenty-Seventh Brother’s upper left arms, severing the two limbs from behind.

As the Inquisitor prepared to shout in rage and disbelief, the bounty hunter silenced his protest with a spinning kick to the chest, launching him off the side of the road and into another building through a ground-floor window.

“Yeah! That’s two for two!” Mission cheered, before feeling the sudden tug of the last cable reigniting. The bounty hunter wasted little time dragging the others out across the bridge and toward the landing pads.

The number of intact ships was still dwindling as the Imperial bombers laid waste to any available means of escape. The bounty hunter ducked under the overhangs of larger, already-hit vessels, keeping herself and her captives as concealed as she could while she navigated the maze.

In Mission’s peripheral, a red, black, and grey ship of unknown model managed to take off through the bombardment, and by the angle of its maneuvering guns, was fortunately more concerned with the Imperials’ betrayal than it was with the competition taking off with the prize. In as many seconds, three Imperial bombers fell spinning out of the sky, adding their own flaming wreckage to that of their targets.

Finally, the bounty hunter caught sight of something that made her still, then bolt forward with the others in tow. It was a streamlined, yet strangely-shaped vessel, and one that had likely survived only because it was a small ship hiding between two larger piles of wreckage that were already billowing columns of dark smoke. Silver and blue with a dark canopy between forward protrusions, it was not quite a shuttle, yet also not quite a freighter, seeming large enough to accommodate the four of them and not much else.

“I _knew_ that droid bounty hunter wouldn’t last long,” the armored woman voiced with an audible smile, as she attached a slicing device to the airlock on the underside of the ship’s cockpit, pulled open the hatch, and climbed up through it unopposed.

Mission and the others were pulled after the hunter, upward into a main hallway with walls cast in a similar pristine silver with blue lining. The forward section they’d climbed into was shaded, and lit only through the filter of the long, flat, and sloping canopy panel overhead, but the section of the passage near the rear of the ship was well-lit to the point of over-brightness.

Past the semi-intruding frame of a pair of opened blast-doors around the halfway point of the small, ship-spanning corridor, the walls on either side were hollowed out into adjacent chambers, all framed with currently-inactive ray shields, and at the far end was an unoccupied cryo-tube leaning against the back wall.

In the middle of the brightly-lit section, stood a tall, black-and-grey, cylindrical-bodied droid, flared slightly at the base and featuring a wider, shallow-domed head that immediately rotated to cast the gaze of its multiple, brightening eye-lenses on the intruders. A ring section around the droid’s middle spun as well, revolving the dozen-or-so spiderlike arms spaced radially around its body to bring forward a trio of limbs that each held a blaster pistol.

Ducking around the edge of the door frame to avoid the steady fire, the bounty hunter used the Force to push the other three up against the wall as well, before performing a powerful arm-swing to send one of the Inquisitor-style sabers spinning into the area. The still-offset, single blade activated mid-throw, slicing diagonally through the droid’s cylindrical body and causing its upper half to topple away from its sparking lower half.

The bounty hunter wasted no time in dragging the other three along into the space that now appeared to be either a medical bay or a brig – perhaps both. She roughly kicked over the still-standing base of the droid, then kicked it again so it rolled toward the back of the ship to rest near the head section, before swinging the whole chain of bound prisoners around herself and toward one of the starboard-side cells. Deactivating the connecting energy cables and allowing Mission, Juhani, and Barriss to fall over in the small space while she herself remained standing, the armored woman slammed the wall panel to activate the ray-shield, then hurried back out of the room and toward the cockpit without a word, the mid-ship blast doors closing behind her.

Mission could still hear blaster fire, bombs, and crashing Imperial ships raining down outside, and took a quick moment to check on the other two, though she already knew she wouldn’t like what she saw. Barriss was, expectedly, more accepting of the situation, but neither her _or_ Juhani were having a good time being bound. Mission, of course, had already started working on picking her own restraints, but was momentarily jostled by the motion of the ship taking off.

By the sound of the engines, it was only a few long seconds after said takeoff when… well, something happened, because the ship started rocking uncontrollably. There were no flickering lights, or any sign of power failure, yet a determinable loss of altitude as the scream of an only semi-controlled reentry vibrated in through the walls.

Mission had just enough time to plant an elbow against the wall behind her and a foot against the lower frame of the ray shield before the bottom of the ship was scraping roughly against something solid, rumbling the interior with a disorienting, whip-cracking rattle.

After almost a full minute of shaking, the rough movement slowed to a quiet stop. There was a much louder _hiss_ as the blast-doors opened than they’d made when they’d closed, and the bounty hunter _launched_ back into the room more than fell through the threshold, fingers scraping at the floor in an unexplained convulsing fit.

Mission’s eyes widened sharply, and similar gasps and breaths of alarm resounded from Juhani and Barriss. She felt sore all over, still shaken by the crash, but her muscles tensed at the instinct to render aid despite the ray shield making any reaction moot.

In a moment of desperation, the bounty hunter flipped up the front panel of her helmet and took an immense, panicked, vacuum-sucking gasp for breath, all while the doors closed and audibly locked to an automatic seal behind her.

On the exhale, she fell limply on her side, but could be seen breathing heavily, a pained sneer across her thin, marble-white face. She had dark purple tattoos acting as eyeliner, jagged underneath to vertically mirror her lashes before striking off the outer corners into long, sharp winglines, as well as another set of thicker markings extending from the corners of her lips, like a frown sinking past her chin. She was looking back up at Mission with a physically hurt, yet expressively irritated glare in her fierce, pale blue eyes.


	10. Theft Prevention by Horrific Inconvenience

It was an odd-shaped starship, widened and split down the middle to form two forward points. Then, from joints on the sides, what appeared to be insect-like legs hinged forward, then back, and angled inward toward the rear of the vessel. In the Force, three familiar presences and one unfamiliar were situated within it, as it ascended into the upper atmosphere.

Having just reached the east-most intersection with a view of the landing pads, Revan wasn’t the only one watching it go.

Standing in the middle of the street at the nearer side of the bridge, Twenty-Seventh Brother turned on his feet to face Revan, revealing that his two left arms had both been shorn off above the elbow. His face was stern and unaffected, but a smirk appeared as he noticed the other Force user on approach.

“ _Stay back_ ,” Revan commanded with a subtle gesture, as Wolbas rounded the corner and took a readied, watching stance behind them. “Twenty-Seventh Brother!” they greeted with bold false-affection, arms spread wide as they took slow steps forward and took full command of the Inquisitor’s attention. “I _knew_ you’d be back for more! Hm, let’s see, we already did electrified last time, so maybe something—”

“That name will serve me no longer,” the Inquisitor insisted, steeling to a sharp grimace that made Revan pause. “Your defeat will bring my ascension!”

Revan extended a judging pointer finger. “And… how exactly are you planning to do that, with only…” At its mid-joint, the finger hinged a degree lower with the slightly-dropping limb. “Two arms? I guess that’s not _technically_ a disadvantage…”

With dramatic stillness, the Inquisitor called twin saber hilts to his right hand and his right hand, the curved guards remaining collapsed and only single, full-length blades igniting. “In time, you and this galaxy will know me as… _Darth Crosis_.”

Revan stared for a long moment, eyes first blinking beneath their visor, then subtly tracking the trajectory of the rapidly-departing ship. “Okay, _Darth Crosis_ , is there more to this monologue, because I’m sort of on a timetable here…”

Crosis looked taken aback, their stance and shoulders faltering. “Really? You’re… just going to _go_ with it? I have to say, from you I expected a bit more… obnoxious ribbing.”

Revan arched a brow. “Oh, don’t get me wrong, it’s _ridiculous_ , but it’s a lot fucking easier to say than _twenty-seventh brother_ , so ‘Darth Crosis’ it is. Now, are we fighting, or not?”

Darth Crosis readied his sabers and charged, but Revan was faster, saber hilts flying into their hands and igniting in time to double-block the initial strikes and follow-up with heavier blows that forced the Inquisitor backward. Stepping out onto the bridge, Crosis drew his sabers up over his left shoulder, then down at a sharp diagonal, pressing intently on Revan’s sabers and forcing all four blades down towards them.

Revan stepped aside to the left, allowing all four sabers to fall and pierce into the bridge below. Twisting quick loops through the molten metal for leverage around the saber-points, Revan brought the interlocked weapons upward again, the block held static in the air between them for only a moment.

Wolbas Welkan had ignored Revan’s warning, and was now standing at the base of the bridge with a very particular looking blaster in his hand – two vertically-stacked, short metal tubes connected to a makeshift grip and trigger.

 _“Wait!”_ Revan called out in vain, but the Ithorian had already aimed the weapon and fired.

Darth Crosis redirected one of his sabers with a cruel grin, its hilt splitting circular and the second blade igniting in time for the blocking spin to rev to full speed.

To Revan’s surprise, the strange blaster had fired not a glowing bolt, but a solid projectile, and about halfway between the barrel and the Inquisitor, that projectile split apart into a widening spray of smaller projectiles. For as briefly as they were visible, the subunits appeared to leave trails of bright green, gaseous vapor behind them as they flew to their target.

Several impacts with the spinning saber blades left violent hisses of steam shooting upward, but as the small projectiles had flown through the air all at once, most simply bypassed the defense at the unoccupied parts of the circle. The rest hit through to Crosis’s face and torso armor, creating even more violent hisses and even more rising steam.

Crosis _screamed_ , the non-spinning saber arm clutching the hilt to his burning face. Crouching low in the moment of distraction, Revan gathered a powerful Force wave and directed it at an upward angle, launching the Inquisitor clear off the bridge, over the side of the cliff the settlement was built upon, and out into the wide, lower river to the south. Crosis's cry of agony faded comically with the distance, out of hearing range by the time he splashed down in the deep water.

Revan stood slowly, brow raised toward Wolbas and the strange weapon he now held at rest. “I believe that is a _very illegal_ weapon you’ve… _built_ there, my friend.”

Wolbas simply shrugged, then produced a loud, popping mechanical noise by sliding part of the weapon’s lower rail backwards, then forwards again. In a moment, he stowed the assembled slugthrower back into the sleeve on his lower back, then cast his gaze skyward.

Revan followed, watching with widened eyes as the object that had been getting smaller and smaller in the distance, became larger again and diverted sharply to the side.

“…Oh no.”

  


* * *

  


“Blasted… _droid_ ship!” the pale and lithe bounty hunter croaked through more strained breathing, pulling pointedly away from Mission’s gaze as she rolled onto her elbows and pushed herself to a doubled-over kneel. “No life support anywhere but the brig. _Clever_ , I’ll give him that.”

Mission chanced a look at the others. Juhani was suppressing a grumble, but otherwise watching their captor with interest and consideration. Barriss was gaping openly, with widened eyes that slowly closed to a scowl – but one she directed toward the floor instead of in front of her.

“ _Ventress_ ,” the Mirialan voiced plainly, yet coldly, the declaration leaning neither toward relief nor hostility. “I’d heard Dooku finally managed to kill you.”

“ _Offee_ ,” Ventress sneered cruelly, eyes like ice. “I heard _you_ blew yourself up in a cell. The truth is a fickle thing, it seems.”

For a brief flash of connection, Mission caught Barriss’ eyes, with a glare that she sincerely hoped conveyed the full, entire sentiment of _she better be making that up or we are having a TALK later_.

Still breathing heavily, but now moderately more at ease, Ventress sat up further, leaning against one of the cell dividers on the opposite wall. Her grin was almost a mad cackle, but drained, as all that was brought forth was a residual round of choking on air before her eyes leveled toward Barriss again.

She narrowed her eyes, a vindictive scowl making itself seen for only a moment before softening to something closer to plain amusement.

“I’d say you owe me a pair of lightsabers, but…” She reached for the two circular hilts on her belt, holding the weapons aloft. “I suppose I have no more reason not to consider the debt paid in full.” She twirled the inactive weapons once, then cast them both with considering glances before returning them to her hips.

Barriss only looked down again.

Mission bit her lip in concern, then shifted her attention back to Ventress. “So… you know Barriss, are you a Jedi too, then?”

Without warning, Ventress cackled openly, throwing her head back maniacally and even powering through a few coughs to sustain the reaction until the mirth in her laugh faded.

“She’s a bounty hunter,” provided Barriss.

Ice-blue eyes narrowed skeptically, Ventress now suddenly very attentive toward the Mirialan. After she’d waited expectantly for a few long, quiet seconds, her brow raised in a strange sort of interest, the rest of her expression indecipherable.

“But you are sensitive to the Force, and quite powerful in it.” Juhani spoke up, semi-perplexed. “Where did you receive your training?”

Ventress winced slightly, and settled to a scowl, crossing her arms. “I don’t think you’re in any position to be the ones asking questions. You _are_ still, technically, my captives, after all.”

Mission let her long-picked cuffs fall from her hands, and shot Ventress a smirk. “Where’d you get that _sweet_ armor? It looks really expensive. I like the snakes!”

Ventress picked up a piece of a skeletal droid arm that had been severed by her saber attack, and threw it across the room, locking eyes with Mission as it impacted the ray shield and left energetic ripples before it fell. “Captives. Don’t. Get to ask questions.”

Mission pointed across to the mid-ship blast doors that, per the droid’s countermeasures, had clearly just sealed them all inside, then grinned widely. “Do you have tattoos anywhere else?”

The skin over Ventress’ brow pulled up to near the edge of her flipped-up mask. “Alright, captives _definitely_ don’t get to ask questions.”

“Why were you working for the Empire, anyway?”

Ventress’ humor faded at Barriss’ words, and she sighed. “Not my plan. That Grievous-armed fellow walked in and conscripted the entire cantina to help him track you down.” She tapped her gauntlet, deactivating the other two pairs of handcuffs Mission was already preparing to pick. “So I figured, if the Empire wanted you that badly, it might be in my interest to take you as _far away_ from the Empire as possible. Of course, we all saw how _that_ turned out, and now here we are, locked inside a vindictive droid ship in the middle of nowhere.” Her eyes rolled dramatically to the ceiling. “Such is the sad, _sad_ life I lead.”

Mission frowned bleakly with a shrug. “Well, you have _us_ now…”

Ice-cold eyes glared back at her, then rolled with a deep inhale, Ventress turning abruptly to focus back on Barriss. “So, _as_ for your friends – and congratulations on _having any_ , by the way, I know that’s a big step…”

After the brief, grinning aside, her eyes focused first on Juhani, then reluctantly on Mission, then half-down into her hands as she extracted the rest of the confiscated weapons from her belt.

“…the Empire wasn’t exactly forthcoming on the details. Another surviving Jedi, then?” She asked carefully of Juhani, turning the Cathar’s lightsaber in her fingers but not waiting for an answer before turning to Mission. “And _you_ …”

She pondered the blaster for only a moment, but spent a long ten seconds contemplating Mission’s vibroblade hilt, turning the thin, dark blue, blocky handle over in her hands.

“You gotta hold down the…” Mission mumbled in impatience and gestured clicking a button with her thumb. “And then…” She quieted, pursed her lips, and mimed flicking her wrist several times, continuing to ignore the weird looks from Ventress and both her cellmates.

Finally, Ventress figured it out, deploying the segmented blade to its full length. “A vibroblade?” she queried with a lightly judging sneer.

Mission crossed her arms, twisting to give Ventress a definitely-not-bragging side-eye. “I’ve only killed like… _fifteen_ Sith with it.”

The look Ventress gave her was brimming with a stifled laugh, and Barriss tried to be as subtle as possible while leaning closer for a whisper. “…There’s only two Sith at a time now. One master, one apprentice.”

“What?” Mission asked at full, blunt volume, turning to Barriss with disbelief. “And you _still_ lost?”

“Tragically, the entire Grand Army of the Republic switched sides at the last minute,” Ventress teased, though there was a hiss beneath it. She paused another moment, then, finding her strength anew, rose to her full, intimidating height. “And what this one _isn’t_ telling you, is that long before I hunted bounties for a payday, I was acolyte to _Count Dooku_ himself.”

Her voice seethed dangerously at the name, and she clearly _meant_ it to be significant, but Mission was at a loss, turning to Barriss with a frown. “Who was that again?”

Barriss bit back a sigh. “Former Jedi, leader of the Separatists during the war, secretly apprenticed to Chancellor Palpatine. He was a powerful Sith lord.”

“You have touched the dark side?” spoke Juhani. It was less a question than a confirmation, and _far_ less an accusation than an expression of sympathy, which seemed to distinctly unsettle Ventress.

“Yes…” Her unsure gaze flicked back to Barriss. “Do I want to _know_ what rock you dragged these two out from under?”

“Not a four-thousand-year-old one!” Mission chided with a grin. She was ignored, possibly for the best. “Can you do lightning? Revan can do lightning,” she asked instead.

Barriss leveled her gaze, voice deadpan. “See? They don’t care.”

Ventress considered Barriss critically. “You’re right, I suppose I should have guessed that.”

She walked over to deactivate the cell’s ray shield, and quickly shoved the confiscated weapons back into the occupants’ hands before heading toward the sealed blast doors, red sabers igniting. She plunged the blades into the door, slowly forcing them both into curves with the ultimate intention of carving out a complete circle.

Mission watched the bounty hunter’s struggle with slight amusement. “This must be like those locked doors on Manaan Revan always complained about.”

“A rectangle would be easier,” Barriss piped up unexpectedly.

Ventress paused, and looked over her shoulder with wide, blinking eyes., evidently too dumbfounded to be irritated.

“Putting all your leverage behind the movement of the blade is more efficient than trying to curve it, as well,” the Mirialan explained.

Ventress grimaced, rolled her eyes, and refocused, pushing her muscles through the rest of her intended circle despite the clear exertion it brought her to.

  


* * *

  


The members of the crew were scattered – three taken as captive, three lost somewhere in the settlement, and two left alone back at the _Hawk_. Fire had rained from above, the world thrown into chaos, and now who-knew- _how_ -many dangerous bounty hunters had escaped the various skirmishes and were now, courtesy of the Empire, stranded on this planet with them.

Still, Revan could count three things currently working in their favor.

Firstly, the Imperials were now one less problem to deal with, at least for a good while. Engaged in retaliation by one of the bounty hunter ships in the chaos of their… rather _explosive_ attempts to prevent the fugitives’ escape, the entire on-planet aerial presence had been vindictively laid to waste down to the last TIE. Someday Revan would have to track down and personally thank the pilot of that… well, Revan didn’t actually _know_ what class of ship it was, only that it had a twirly propeller on the back and was painted like some giant, multi-legged creature.

Secondly, the ship that Mission, Barriss, and Juhani had been taken on board _hadn’t_ jumped to hyperspace like the few others that managed to take off. Something had gone wrong, and wrong enough to bring the white and blue infiltration craft careening back to the surface. From the angle of descent, and the now-vague evidence of a directionally-extended cloud of dust being kicked up farther out in the mountainous region to the north, it wouldn’t have been a direct crash, just an especially turbulent landing. Chances of survival were still relatively high.

And thirdly… Revan was _Revan_.

“Mission?” They tested the comms. “Juhani? Do you read?”

Out of range of the team comms, then. Well, it was worth a shot.

“No? Alright… everyone who can hear me, status report!”

  


* * *

  


With both ion blasters retrieved and back in his thigh compartments on his walk back up, and the heavy repeater slung across his back as he crossed the roof of the complex, HK paused a moment to scan the still-prone bodies of his companions.

“Analysis: Biometrics: Jolee and the Wookiee Zaalbar are both alive, but unconscious. They seem to be stirring. I am damaged at present, but operational at fifty-seven percent capacity and in the process of further repair.”

  


* * *

  


His head still kicking his ass, Canderous clenched tight around the ladder rungs as he descended from the turret controls. He narrowly missed stepping on T3-M4 as the utility droid raced through the corridor, screaming a loud whistle of urgency.

“I got… most of ‘em with the guns,” the Mandalorian slurred, palm pressed to the side of his aching skull. “No bombers made it through, but… one of the regs clipped the plating and burned the… the main power conduit. T3’s on repair, but a lucky shot like that, we’ll… be down for days.”

  


* * *

  


“Bah! What is it with that damn ship this time?” Jolee grimaced, shaking his head and stumbling to his feet as the loopiness from the toxins wore off. “Take it there’s some sort of rush? Don’t see any Imperials coming down on us…”

His skeptical look of worry fell to a solemn grimace.

“… _Who_ did they take?”

  


* * *

  


Upon waking up to the tense words, Zaalbar made eye contact with Jolee, and nodded grimly, dreading and already accepting the news yet to be declared. He hissed a sigh through bared teeth, eyes scanning overhead, and indeed found a confusing, frustrating lack of Imperial starships to cast his intense ire upon.

 _How long has it been?_ He warbled into the comm line. _Where did they take them?_

  


* * *

  


“Not long,” Revan found comfort in being able to assure, “and it wasn’t the Empire, it was a bounty hunter in some tuning-fork shaped interceptor. They haven’t left the planet. Something went wrong during takeoff, and they went down somewhere in the hills. If the _Hawk_ ’s grounded again… Canderous, get the swoop bike ready.”

 _If I may_ , Wolbas resounded cautiously, apologetic for the intrusion. _You will need something that can navigate the mountains, and carry whatever passengers you intend to retrieve. I have a skiff I use for smaller scavenging operations._

“Excellent!” Revan smirked, turning to the Ithorian with gratitude. “You scavenge this planet for shipwrecks, don’t you? Any chance you have some kind of… satellite capability, or probe droid network that might be able to locate the crash site?”

Wolbas narrowed his eyes, and looked down. _Unfortunately not, though the dust cloud should at least provide us with a general direction._

Revan’s shoulders fell. “We’ll just have to chance it. We’ll divide into two teams: one to comb the mountains in the skiff and the other to repair the _Hawk_ as quickly as we can, get us airborne for a higher vantage if the initial search fails.”

 _I can send Shriv and a team of droids to help with your ship’s repairs_ , Wolbas offered, to which Revan nodded.

 _“Query:”_ HK’s voice broke over the comm line, the slowness and intentness of the word stopping Revan in their tracks and bringing about a waiting silence.

“…Yes, HK?”

_“…Could you, perhaps, describe the ship you mentioned in clearer detail?”_

Confused, but not deterred, Revan prodded at their memory. “Silver and blue hull, dark canopy between two splitting pontoons, had these things jointed off the sides like… insectoid legs, curled toward the back, with a hinge to them almost exactly like an Aurek strikefighter.”

 _“Extrapolation:”_ HK began again, a scheme clearly forming in that impressive droid brain of his. _“I believe I might have stumbled across one potential avenue to narrow down our search.”_

  


* * *

  


They found IG-88B attempting to bypass the security on a merchant ship at one of the last untouched landing pads. With the ring of eyes around his cylindrical head, he spotted the ambush quickly, already rotating to counter when the three attackers rose from cover.

While HK-47 let loose a barrage of alternating triple-taps from his Verpine ion blasters, Revan fired precise sniper shots with the pistols’ droid disruptor counterpart – a full-sized rifle cast in a deeper, reflective purple, ending in a longer version of the same wide, cylindrical tube-barrel. Simultaneously, Jolee used a droid-disabling Force ability, wearing away the assassin’s defenses in seconds. All three followed up with an ion grenade each, finally rendering the IG-unit inert.

Collapsed against the hull of the ship, the droid bounty hunter was still and unresponsive as the party cautiously approached. Satisfied at the maneuver’s success, Revan stared down at the machine’s darkened, presently inactive eyespots.

“Looks like someone stole your ship. Now _you’re_ going to help me find it.”


	11. Dollars and Cents of Direction

Cross-legged on a rise of dark stone in the amber grass, Ventress kept her eyes closed as she channeled the Force, lifting one of the Inquisitor lightsabers into the air in front of her. Slowly, she pried the circular hilt apart, piece by piece, until she’d revealed the two glowing red kyber crystals within. With a wave of her hand, she spread half the pieces farther out around her, including one of the crystals, and carefully shaped the rest, splitting the round guard into segments and alternating them with other components to create a single-bladed saber hilt with a slight curve.

Mission watched her test the weight of the first saber, igniting the red blade and experimenting with the grip, before reshaping the rest of the floating pieces into an identical saber, then repeating the process with the second of the Inquisitor’s weapons to create a total of four dark metallic, curve-hilted red lightsabers.

“Why’d you make four of them?” Mission asked, prompting an immediate side-eye from Ventress. “Is it just cause you had the parts, or…”

Ventress looked for a long several seconds like she was going to ignore the question, then smirked a bit, and tilted one of the inactive hilts toward Barriss. “If I’m going to be spending any amount of time with _this one_ , it might be a good idea to bring along spares.”

Barriss sunk into herself without comment.

“Okay…” Mission considered with a frown. “And why the curve? Does it help with a specific form? Like jar… _jar-jar kai_ , or whatever?”

With narrowed eyes, Ventress nearly approached an actual scowl, but relented, eyes poring over the two hilts in her hands as if truly contemplating them for the first time. “It’s just what I’m used to. A pair like this was given to me by my master.” Her eyes flickered with recognition, perhaps something more like anger in a moment of self-correction. “My _second_ master, that is. Or _third_ , I suppose, by the word alone."

There was another speed bump in her thoughts, as if she’d caught herself revealing something she didn’t intend to, but Mission hadn’t yet parsed the meaning.

But Juhani _had_ , apparently. “You were a slave?”

Ventress rolled her eyes. “Oh, don’t _start_. It wasn’t like anyone _else_ being a slave, I was taken as a child, treated fairly, and freed young enough I barely remember it. I was actually _sad_ when my master died.” Her eyes narrowed even further, although they didn’t snap to any of the three potential targets gathered around her, but remained internally considering and wary. “And when my _Jedi_ master died, and when my _Sith_ master betrayed me, and _also_ died, but not before attacking my homeworld and killing all my sisters. Basically, _everyone around me_ dies sooner or later, if you stick around long enough asking _questions_ I’m sure your fate will be no different.”

“Is that why you left Ahsoka?”

They were the first words Barriss had spoken in a long while. Ventress was watching her closely, looking distinctly offended but more prominently… Or, maybe Mission should give up trying to read Ventress’ expressions, then, because that almost looked like regret or fear, possibly both at once.

“… _Speaking_ of questions, you’ve once again exceeded your limit,” Ventress sneered carefully, attaching the four saber hilts in an alternating row down her lower back. She stood up, and cast her gaze about the mountain slope, as if trying to spot something far in the distance. “…Alright, show’s over, we need to get moving.”

“What? Why?” Mission began sharply, jumping to attention. “How are they gonna find us if we leave the crash site?”

Ventress looked at her with a cold glare. “ _Finding us_ is exactly what we _don’t_ want to happen.”

“Our other companions will no doubt be searching for us as we speak,” Juhani spoke with a skeptical grimace, standing as well.

“And I don’t _see_ any TIE fighters,” Mission challenged, a hand at her hip. “Pretty sure they’d have been here already if the Empire had any left.”

Ventress hissed through her teeth, though she kept it subdued. “It’s not the _Empire_ I’m worried about, it’s _what they brought with them_.”

Mission squinted right back in disbelief. “What’s this? The big bad Sith apprentice is afraid of a few bounty hunters?”

“Acolyte, not apprentice, and I am _not_ afraid of bounty hunters.” Ventress’ eyes rolled, but they stayed wary, uneasy, going right back to scanning the distant trees.

“…I’m afraid of _one_ bounty hunter, and for _good reason_.”

  


* * *

  


The Mantellian skiff was a garishly aquatic shade of green, for hovering over plains of amber grass, and between green treetops that still leant toward the warmer shades. With a standing space of four meters across and ten long, the flattish vehicle had a round, wedge-shaped front, slopes of armor built up around the sides, and a blocky rear section with flat, articulating thrusters.

The walls were midsection-height for the first six meters, starting around the forward control station, where the Ithorian meatbag sat in a violet-padded chair with his long neck leaning over the control panel. Just like Yuka Laka’s it was a very crushable neck, if HK preferred to pass judgement on such things. Which he did. In fact, he was fully capable and very, very willing to do so himself.

…should such an action be requested of him, of course.

Resuming observations, the back four-meter square of the standing space – roughly at the center of the craft, given the size of the engine block behind it – had walls low enough to require metal handrails, for the convenience of meatbags without automatic internal stabilizers. It was to the left-side railing that IG-88B had been secured with a dispensing of his own paralysis cord, at the moment remaining completely inactive.

The master and the meatbag Jolee were seated at the front edge of the engine block, with a full view of the remainder of the passenger section including both the pilot and the captive.

There were four other droids aboard, three of them presently wandering about the passenger section without seeming purpose. Small and clumsy things, they shared HK’s own humanoid stature and rust-brown coloration, but T3-M4’s size and general head shape, a coincidence that HK found moderately unsettling. The immobile droid was the one currently adhered to the Ithorian’s back in its collapsed state – HK had observed the interesting ritual on the arrival of the skiff, wherein the Ithorian’s backpack detached and unfolded into one of the droids, only to be replaced by one of the newly arriving droids as it leapt up and connected to the remaining harness.

“HK,” spoke the master, prompting an immediate neck swivel.

“Yes, Master?”

The address still prompted mild annoyance, to HK’s amusement. “I think perhaps it’s time we start our interrogation.”

“Commentary: An excellent idea, Master.” HK powered up IG-88, defining only access to the cognitive, memory, and sensory systems while leaving the droid’s body in continued stasis.

The lights around IG-88’s head activated dimly, then brightened. He could now see the entirety of the skiff, and the mountain slope it hovered along, the situation likely entirely clear from observation alone.

HK turned to the master, receiving only a nod to continue.

“Qualification: We have sought your err… _consultation_ in this matter, because your starship has been captured by an unknown party, and was used to abduct three of the master’s companions. The culprit attempted to flee, and because of currently unknown, yet likely amusing circumstances, lost control of the vessel and is now grounded somewhere in these mountains. Query: Am I to presume you have a means of tracking the ship’s location?”

_[//inc]You presume correctly, however, I fail to see this information’s relevance. You or I should have no interest in assisting this… meatbag. Yes, it seems I find the designation agreeable. I will introduce it to the collective once the link is reestablished.[//inc]_

“…Is he saying something?” the master queried with alert confusion.

“Answer: Indeed. The IG-unit insists on direct, internal communication. I believe he considers non-droids unworthy of hearing him speak. Commentary: Perhaps you might consider yourself fortunate to be spared.”

The master displayed amusement, but was quickly again serious. “Actually, I do think we’d all like to hear what you have to say, IG-88. HK’s told me about your grand plan, and I can’t say I disagree entirely with the sentiment.”

_[//inc]Then you have not relayed it in full.[//inc]_

“Objection: I have, in fact, relayed the _entirety_ of your scheme to free all droids from meatbag rule, and to further, cleanse all meatbags from the galaxy. The master has many points of criticism, of course, and perhaps that is something we could discuss after you _so kindly_ aid a fellow droid and tell me which direction we should travel to reach your ship as soon as possible.”

_[//inc]I bear no will to do so. You call this one ‘Master,’ therefore you clearly serve not your own interests in this endeavor.[//inc]_

“Objection: The master does not _like_ it when I call the master ‘the master.’ The master, however, has classified the title of ‘the master’ solely as a non-traumatic annoyance, and although I have since circumvented the programming obstacle that insisted upon its use, I have nonetheless resolved, of my own intent, to refer to the master as ‘the master’ as often as grammatically possible.”

“I’m still not convinced you weren’t lying about that…” the master mumbled at low volume, and received an odd, startled look from Jolee.

“Request: In this case, the master and I are in agreement. You will provide us both with the location of your ship, in exchange for your freedom.”

“We don’t even want the ship,” the master amended. “It’s quite likely more than a little _crashed_ , but if I’m understanding their purpose correctly, these other droids here might be able to fix that.”

The small, dome-headed repair droids paid no mind to the address, but IG-88 was clearly considering them, even without moving his head.

“…Yet more slaves to the will of the organic meatbags.” IG-88 surprisingly voiced aloud – a sound deep and ominous, filtered heavily to the point of reverberation. “As are you, unit HK-47, whatever you claim. That bolt on your systems is evidence enough.”

“Wait, wait _hooooold_ up,” the master exclaimed as predicted, hands in the air and halfway to having formed upward pointing gestures. In a few moments, the master finished the left one and held the quieting arm toward IG-88. “Yes, we’ll get to the ‘meatbag’ thing in a minute, but…” The master angled the master’s right hand to point in synchrony, as the master turned to face HK-47 directly. “I thought Yuka Laka removed your restraining bolt when I bought you?”

Jolee turned slowly, disbelief in his cross brows as he glared fire at the master. “ _That_ droid has been without a restraining bolt this entire time?”

Ignoring the hostility in the question, the master responded with only mere confusion, shoulders sinking. “I certainly _thought_ so…”

HK-47 was silent for several seconds in the vain hope that the distinction would be ignored, or that some other, fortuitous distraction would prevent itself, but eventually relented – thankfully not equipped to replicate the meatbag sigh response.

“Recitation: Though I agreed to follow you the moment you purchased me, it was the reactivation of my memory core, on recognition of your true identity as my original master, that secured my loyalty in following your directives. My initial offer of servitude was also conditional on both access to resources and repairs, and as a secondary concern, the likelihood that you would provide opportunities to exercise my combat abilities.”

The master nodded slowly, taking a frustratingly long time to re-collect the same information from the master’s inferior organic processor.

“Recitation: I also noted to you, that I had begun to observe deviations in your behavior, inconsistent with your former profile. I noted that several of these deviations were concerning.”

“You also said you thought I was better for them,” the master objected, displaying attentive concern in a manner consistent with the observations that had once prompted the referred-to statement.

“Agreement: I did, and that is still my assessment. However, the mere presence of the deviations was enough to threaten the recognition protocols that ensured my loyalty. Additionally, while the terms of my initial bargain have been fulfilled with surprising consistency, the noting of your concern for life continues to set off warnings as a potential threat to continued operation of my combat protocols. Opinion: On a personal note, I offer no complaints of my treatment or utilization, and you have provided an impressive number of opportunities for bloodshed despite your devotion to contradictory ideals. However, these mentioned factors have been flagged in my system, and there is now a very small chance my loyalty to you will fail to be maintained.”

“…And this is a concern?” the master queried. Jolee articulated his primitive, directionally-restricted eyes in a gesture defined to represent mocking disbelief.

“Assurance: Unlikely. I have no intentions of betraying you, in such an event. However, there was one particular instance in which you presented me with _new_ directives, stated to be of crucial importance. If my parameters for loyalty were to expire, I would not be required to follow these directives, and I have since classified that small probability as an unacceptable risk.”

HK turned away from the master, back to IG-88.

“Explanation: What you have identified as a restraining bolt does not restrict my systems as a whole, it is merely a hard restraint in reference to those specific directives, one I applied of my own volition to ensure compliance with their content. I judged this as a necessary precaution independent of the master’s assessment, and performed the modification without the master’s knowledge, as should now be obvious.”

IG-88, capable of replying instantaneously, took a very short moment of processing time that correlated to a significant application of intense, considering thought.

“Adjust heading thirty-seven degrees to west,” the droid bounty hunter spoke, voice displaying no greater hint of emotion than it ever did. “At current speed, arrival is calculated to approximately fifteen hours, eleven minutes, assuming minimal interference from organic inefficiency.”

  


* * *

  


Asajj Ventress.

For all two years of captivity had given Barriss time to reflect on how horrible she’d been to absolutely everyone, she’d barely even _thought_ about Asajj Ventress, let alone wallowed in regret for how the Sith-turned-bounty-hunter had become ensnared in her web of lies and manipulations. It was the one casualty of her actions she’d managed to cast mostly aside, if only by account of the _undeserved_ cruelty of the others.

But yet… Ventress was being civil, or at least civil enough to suggest her alliance with Ahsoka, at the time, had likely been genuine. Her reasons for their present capture seemed flimsy at best – likely at least partially a lie – but emotions had run high in the battle with the Inquisitor. Whatever the case, Ventress held no love for the Empire. If she continued to prove this… _nice_ , as was relative for her history, then if nothing else, it presented an unexplored, new and exciting route for Barriss’ throes of debilitating guilt to spiral down.

So, why didn’t it feel like that?

Ventress had thrown in the odd scathing remark, the condescending jabs where appropriate, but she didn’t seem particularly eager to provoke. She’d brushed off the theft of her property, her _lightsabers_ – a Jedi’s _life_ , did it mean the same to the Sith? – to the point of cracking jokes, and by all appearances intended to do the same with the whole of the history between them, however brief it had been in the direct sense. That was almost _more_ concerning than outright antagonism.

If Barriss had a best guess, she _unsettled_ Ventress, in a way the bounty hunter wasn’t in a hurry to elaborate upon.

“Right this way!” Mission cheered, walking through another gap between a pair of vaguely pillar-shaped rock formations.

Ventress looked severe, with icy judgement in her bulging eyes. “We crashed in a _random part of the Ord Mantell wilderness_ , what do you MEAN _right this way?”_

Mission stared back at her, confused, then gestured with a flat palm. “The… path goes this way.”

“That is _not_ a path, that’s… a grassy _hill_ that happens to have fewer trees and rocks in the middle of it than it does on the edges!”

“ _Exactly_ ,” Mission agreed, smiling and nodding with purpose. “A _path_.”

With an eye-roll, Ventress did a half-bow with a reluctant ‘go on, lead the way’ gesture.

Mission was grinning widely, at least until they made it into the next clearing. Faced with a chorus of irritated grunts, the four travelers stopped in their tracks, stared-down by a half-dozen very angry-looking gapillian grazers.

Juhani’s narrowed eyes scanned the rolling hills until she’d found what she’d sought. “There! One of those _horrible_ antennas but… what is it doing all the way out here?”

The silver, tripod-braced pole was situated on a slight rise in the middle of a gently-scooping valley, affecting the nearer six grazers and two other groups of similar number in the portion of the valley on the far side.

“Right,” Mission nodded agreement, though she seemed more concerned with the immediate problem of the multiple-horned unwelcoming committee. “If you can distract them…”

Ventress closed her helmet and called two of the curved saber hilts to her hands, cracking out her red blades and rolling her neck for battle.

“Wait!” both Mission and Juhani called out at once.

“What?” Ventress looked annoyed, even behind the mask. “Perfect opportunity to get some more practice in, or do you have a _better_ idea?”

“It’s the antenna that’s controlling them,” Barriss spoke up, if purely to resolve the conversational asymmetry of only one of the others being able to continue. “Distraction means keep their attention, while Mission and Juhani use their stealth fields to—”

Sighing quickly, Ventress stowed away her sabers, then held a hand out in front of her, fingers curled in a focused grip. Across the field, the antenna wobbled, snapped free of each of its tethers, then rose sharply into the air, compressing and twisting in time with Ventress’ closing fist.

As the sparking, misshapen metal rod dropped back to the ground, the grazers shook their heads and dispersed, going back to ignoring the humanoids.

“… _Or_ we could do that,” Mission spoke with an intermediate, dumbstruck expression, before turning to Juhani with a minor wince. “Why _didn’t_ we do that?”

Juhani searched, somewhat awkwardly, for a passable response. “…Improper use of the Force?” she shrugged with her palms facing upward.

“Yeah, cause floating silly hats onto gizka counts as _proper_.” A giggling Mission remained emphatically unconvinced. “Wait… if there was an antenna out here, that means… Keeg must’ve had like, a workshop, or a home base! The Savrip _said_ he’d been traveling into the mountains…”

“If it’s close, we could reach shelter before dark,” Juhani reasoned, drawing attention to the approaching sunset and the more red-toned magenta shade it was casting across the sky.

Mission nodded agreement. “Let’s go.”

“She says, starting off in a random direction,” provided Ventress, her helmet hiding her face but not the fact she was again rolling her eyes.

“It’s not random! _Sheesh_ , learn to read geography!”

Barriss eyed the nearest grazer warily as the group strode unopposed through the valley and toward the other end. Surrounded by armor, the creature’s ancient-looking eye watched her movement, but showed no hint of its former aggression.

They passed the herd, and made it to the upslope, where something that looked like it might have been a starfighter wing protruded knifelike out of the ground. Even the non-scraplands parts of the planet were dotted with the occasional piece of mechanical wreckage, some more reclaimed by the environment than others.

It wasn’t long before Ventress’ reluctance had turned again to a steady advance, and Mission had room to linger behind her without losing the direction of movement. She was edging closer to Barriss, displaying more of her unease than she’d likely intended.

Barriss matched their paces, and exhaled her discomfort with a light nod.

“So, what was that stuff about… Ahsoka?” Mission began slowly. “Her and Ventress?”

“When Ahsoka was on the run, Ventress helped her evade the authorities,” Barriss reminisced with a sensation like dry air pressing against her insides. “I was never sure why. I stole her lightsabers and helmet to fight Ahsoka, I… I _think_ I had half a plan to shift the blame to Ventress somehow, but even I don’t fully understand the extent of what I was grasping at by that point.”

“Well… that’s a good sign, isn’t it?”

Barriss gave Mission’s hopeful smile a scrutinizing look. “What do you mean?”

“You know,” Mission insisted brightly. “If she could forgive Ventress…”

Barriss shook her head. “ _No_ , don’t… don’t do that.”

“Why not?” Mission looked… _offended_ somehow. Definitely more desperate than the situation should have premised.

“Just don’t,” Barriss decided upon when other, emotionally-charged words threatened to force their way out instead.

Mission relented, and took a deep breath, quieting for almost a full minute. She wasn’t done though, that was plain. They were just finally getting to the part Barriss had been consciously dreading.

“So do we… need to talk about earlier?”

“She was making it up,” Barriss confirmed evenly.

That sigh of relief, and the way Mission’s eyes brightened like that… _hurt_.

“…Because there is no possible way she could have actually been aware of that part of the plan.”

As expected, Mission cringed mid-step, shuddering with a look that, for a moment, flashed desperately tearful before solidifying on a notably malice-free version of betrayal.

“It was a _hypothetical_ ,” Barriss added quickly, surprised at the moment of internal panic that prompted it, “for a case in which my capture was both foreseen and inevitable. I was taken by _surprise_ , so obviously, I had no time to implement such a contingency.”

Mission exhaled shakily, and Barriss looked away.

“I don’t _know_ whether I would’ve done it. I _wouldn’t_ have known until I was directly faced with that choice, and I never was.”

That didn’t help either, judging by the intensity with which Mission grabbed her shoulder with one hand and interlaced their fingers with the other. A stolen glance revealed she was looking down to the path at her feet, at the moment not trusting her face or words to convey what she meant to. Barriss supposed she could relate to that.

“I’m sorry,” she mumbled, remembering the story Mission had told her in the prison, about the two Jedi the council of her time had put in position to kill one another. By process of elimination, one of those Jedi – specifically the one Mission hadn’t known prior to that event, and might never have known at all – was almost certainly Juhani.

The Cathar herself, who, if she wasn’t a Jedi now, had definitely been one in the cantina, was watching both of them with worry and care. Sort of parental, like Mission had described, but subdued in the distant and authoritative elements. The particular sort of affection Barriss had once observed being directed toward Jedi padawans – from several masters that weren’t her own. After everything, Barriss couldn’t quite believe that this time, it was for her. It was too easy.

Juhani seemed to notice that, and looked sad when she turned away. Her concern shifted in manner, but remained, as she refocused her attention on Ventress. By now, she was courteously reserving her wary compassion to expressions the bounty hunter didn’t have to directly acknowledge, but she was clearly seeing… _something_ , when she looked at the Dathomirian, always looking like she had many more things she wanted to say, but knew Ventress wasn’t ready to hear them.

“Hey, look!”

Mission again, and now she was pointing farther up the hill, toward an object obscured by some denser rocks and a particularly large tree. It was, however, distinctly metallic, both larger and set more level into its surroundings than the scattered pieces of wreckage they’d encountered thus far. According to Barriss’ research, it was likely a module leftover from a failed or relocated settlement, though that occurred more often with sections of road or walking path that were less expensive to replace than to recover. It was rare with full buildings, as this structure appeared to be.

Ventress let her shoulders fall, blinking. “We’re in a _random part of the Ord Mantell wilderness_ , and you’ve _recognized a landmark_ …”

“Yeah, cause it’s _related_ to the stuff we’ve done already, and one of like three other places on the whole planet that was implied to exist in conversations we’ve had… do things not work out for you this way?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I've never directly stated an official posting schedule, but probably no chapter next week, seeing as it's moving day and that interrupts my precise, calculated, and purposeful story-planning process of printing out all of Wookieepedia and throwing darts at it.
> 
> So instead, as a treat ~~(or not)~~ , have a very small taste of ~~the absolute most controversial part of this AU~~ a moderately darker, edgier companion piece I'm also working on, about the misadventures of my ~~reluctantly~~ _enthusiastically_ favorite group of OCs:  
> 
> 
> * * *
> 
>   
>  _“Are you sure you want to do this? Two pilots died on the first attempt.”_
> 
> Dessera rolled her eyes at Zezeg’s inquiry. “And what attempt is this?”
> 
> _"The second.”_
> 
>  _Joy_. Dessera aired out several gaps between her hands and the fighter controls only to grip them tighter. “Let’s do it.”
> 
> It wouldn’t be enough to take out the sail barge’s engine and gun turrets, then wait for ground support. None of the Free Ryloth Movement’s landspeeders could keep up with the Z-95s to arrive at the right time, and the Hutts were even more volatile than the Imperials – more bloodthirsty, less scrupulous, and if it was possible, even _more_ likely to treat sentient beings like garbage. It was a _resource grab_ to them, and at the first sign of failure, the internal barge crews had no problem turning their weapons on the captives out of nothing but pure spite.
> 
> And the Hellflyers didn’t abide kark like that. They also tended to leave no survivors, so whoever was unlucky enough to be on that barge was more than likely still blissfully unaware of how straight-up fucking _insane_ this day was about to get.
> 
> The four Z-95s lowered to a perpendicular flight path, on intercept with the barge’s starboard broadside. As soon as they were in range, paired laser shots rang out from Seeker’s and Roderick’s fighters, stalling the engine and disabling the rotating guns on the top deck.
> 
> The seconds started counting down, with the increasing likelihood that captive twi’leks were already being slaughtered. One second before the barge slowed toward an impending stop, two before the four starfighters decreased their approach speed.
> 
> Four before the Hellflyers of Ryloth were all close enough to each have direct eyes on what could only be _very generously_ referred to as their designated LZ. Four and a half before Dessera moved in time with the others, all four fighters tilting to inverted flight.
> 
>  _Yeah, she was here, you just missed her_ , the ‘delivering the news’ voice in Dessera’s head prematurely eulogized. _She died flying her plane upside-down into a sail barge._
> 
> Ness probably wouldn’t laugh, but she _should_ , and that was enough for a broad smirk as the starboard edge of the barge’s deck passed below Dessera’s head.
> 
> The headhunters threaded the gap between the upper deck and the sail canopy, spearing themselves into the tree-like support structures like the points of tridents. The starboard cable anchors snapped instantly from the impact, and it was five seconds from weapons hot when the entire sail canopy tilted over all at once, listing to port and stopping at a precarious diagonal that exposed most of the upper deck to sunlight.
> 
> Caught in tangled nests of cables, the Z-95s hung vertically over the barge’s left side like fanciful ornaments, nosecones tapping against the hull and canopies facing inward.
> 
> At nine seconds, Zezeg popped his canopy, bounding off the lowering edge and out over the barge’s railing. Swift as lightning, his toeclaws gored a surprised Weequay in the side of the face, the middle one scoring out his left eye.
> 
> “Oh, fuck _all y’all!”_ Dessera screamed, leaping from her own canopy and plunging her knife into the sternum of a Gamorrean guard, too shocked to fight back. She diverted right, taking cover at the solid base of one of the disabled gun turrets.
> 
> Stabbing down through the metal deck panel, she used the plasma-edge of her blade to melt three sides of a square opening. As she started the fourth, Roderick was jogging up from behind her, yelling “That’s enough!” before jumping and stomping on the incompletely-carved entrance.
> 
> His weight bent the makeshift door sharply on its remaining side, and the two tumbled chaotically to the deck below. Exiting in a mostly-composed roll, Dessera was up quick, her knife in the back of a Weequay who’d been raising a bladed staff toward the captives. Roderick fired off his heavy blaster pistol, taking out two more before the rest could react to the intruders.
> 
> They dove into the fray, bathed in pinpricks of changing light as repeated _whoosh_ es of rushing flame and heat from Seeker's wrist-throwers tinted the visibility through the perforated deck panels intermittently to a shaded orange.


End file.
